THERE'S no place like home, reckons ruby slipper-clicking Dorothy, but there's no place like the theatre for getting out of the home and escaping into another world.
And "another world" doesn't come much weirder than L Frank Baum's merry old land of Oz, most memorably converted from his 1900 novel to a film wonderland for Judy Garland as over-the-rainbow farm girl Dorothy Gale in 1939.
Robert Readman's York company Pick Me Up Theatre have picked it for their spring show, its bright, yellow-bricked parade such an antidote to the grey pallor outside.
Ultra-colourful sets from Scenic Projects, dazzling costumes from the Sheffield Crucible, and lighting by Adam Moore that often floods out over the stalls too all add to the high quality of Readman's joyful staging of John Kane's Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation, wherein principals and ensemble alike have their chance to shine. The Tornadoes team at Saturday's matinee went down a storm when playing the Munchkins.
Fine performance of Finn East: outstanding as the Guard
Musical director Sam Johnson marshals his musical forces for Harold Arlen and EY Harburg's songs with aplomb, those songs given such expressive life by Finn East's Guard and Nick Lewis's Lion in particular.
Anna Hale, one of two Dorothys from the University of York in Pick Me Up's company (along with Emily Chattle), leads with plenty of pluck and palpitations; Stuart Rae brings delightful physicality dexterity to Scarecrow, Joe McNeice has an old-school Hollywood charm about his Tin Man and Ian Giles has a wiz time as the Professor and humbug Wizard.
Alexandra Mather glistens as Glinda and Adam Sowter is wickedly good as the wickedly bad Wicked Witch of The West, to the tips of his bony fingers, and splendidly vile as Miss Gulch too. Cross-dressing clearly suits him!
Pick Me Up Theatre in The Wizard Of Oz, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Performances: 7pm tonight to Wednesday; 7.30pm, Thursday, Friday; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york
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