Guyanne Wilson
It had all the makings of an excellent piece of theatre. The production team was led by two of T&T's theatre greats: director Mervyn de Goeas and choreographer Linda Pollard-Lake. The cast featured a number of faces who have consistently shone in the spate of musical theatre productions mounted on the Queen's Hall stage ever since the hall re-opened in 2002.
The Proscenium Theatre Company has earned a reputation for attracting and mobilising the country's best theatrical talents. The libretto was nominated for the Best Book of a Musical award at the 1975 Tonys, and the score took home award for Best Original Score. The Wiz could have been brilliant. And there were moments of brilliance.
Billed as a tribute to the late Trinidadian Broadway giant, Geoffrey Holder, Proscenium's production stayed true to Holder's artistic prodigy with particular regard to costume design. Holder received the Tony Award for the Best Costume Design as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding costuming for the 1975 production of The Wiz. Forty-odd years later, de Goeas' design and Gloria Pembreton's costume construction would surely place this production on similar standing.
Diahann White's (Aunt Em) warm, alto voice set the tone for what was generally very good solo singing throughout the evening. Justin Zephyrine's (Scarecrow) soulful voice almost captured the Motown mood, and Maurice Morancie's (Tinman) rich baritone nearly reminded me of the men's voices filtered out of LPs throughout my childhood on easy Sunday mornings. Jeannine Clarke's spirited rendition of Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News was true to the feel-good, good-news essence of that gospel number.
Far too often though, the singing was reminiscent of the 1990's R&B of Toni Braxton and Boyz II Men, in and of itself good music, but not quite in the style of R&B's funk, disco, and gospel antecedents. This was particularly true of Tishanna Williams' pleasant and powerful singing voice.
The ensemble similarly comprised clearly competent singers, but their voices were too sweet, too delicate, too soulless for soul music. As a result, the ensemble did not provide the quality of vocal support the soloists needed in order to sustain the energy in signature pieces such as Ease on Down the Road and Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.
The dialogue seemed stilted throughout, as though the actors never got quite comfortable with the rhythms of African American Vernacular English. The words were clearly enunciated, but sometimes at the expense of the sense of the line, with the result that humorous bits of dialogue were lost, though the performance garnered more than the occasional chortle. More critically, the actors' inconsistent use of African American Vernacular English meant that it became caricatured through being relegated to fillers like, Hmm girl and Amen. This betrayed one of the greatest achievements of The Wiz, which, along with earlier works like A Raisin in the Sun, elevated the place of this language variety and its speakers.
The audience was very receptive to inter-textual references to aspects of local culture: The Mighty Sparrow's Congo Man while an evil act is being done; the imitation of allegedly-corrupt politicians and football officials in Keino Swamber's representation of the Gatekeeper.
Here too some mental fodder: mightn't it have been more authentic, a more genuine act of appreciation, to remain true to the work as it was written, or are we only able to sing praises in the voice of the chantuelle? When does adaptation become compromise?
In ancient times, a proscenium referred to the area of the stage in front of the intricately-decorated backdrop scenery. The Wiz's minimalist sets thus belied the production company's name, and didn't quite reproduce the grandeur and spectacle that is the Emerald City. This could have perhaps been helped by more effective lighting. In other places, however, such as the poppy fields, the creative use of the ensemble members and effective costuming showed that gaudy sets are not always required.
The Wiz is the first in a triptych that Proscenium has dedicated to local playwrights and practitioners who have had international impact. A praiseworthy project, and one that I hope grows in strength as the series continues. The company certainly has the potential to produce outstanding work, as they showed us in previous productions of Rent and Little Shop of Horrors.