what Sarah Silverman said about little girls<\/a>: don’t tell little girls they can be whatever they want because that is what puts the idea in their head that someone says they can’t. Anyway, they convince the Wiz to go back home to Omaha, which didn’t take a lot of effort considering they were like, ‘you can eat at Modern Love’, so she’s like yeah aight let’s bounce. Queenie lets down her hair and looks f-ing amazing in her final number “Y’all Got It”, and she also sounds a lot better. She gets in the hot air balloon and calls for Dorothy to join her, and in the original Wizard of Oz, Dot is too busy hugging her friends and tripping on her own feet and stuff and misses the flight in an oh shoot oh no manner. I love that here, Dorothy decides that going to Omaha is not right for her. Granted, she could have GONE to Omaha with the Wiz and then caught the freaking bus back to Auntie Em…because Omaha is closer to Kansas than a freaking OTHER REALM is, but she is only 13 and so her brain is only halfway developed. Her heart was in the right place, I guess. Kids are dumb. But luckily Glinda arrives! We haven’t met Glinda yet and it’s almost over. Luckily Uzo Aduba is worth waiting for, because her Glinda has a touch of Crazy Eyes in her and it’s a great combination. Her song “Believe In Yourself” has some strong moments, a few rough patches, but overall I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was watching Crazy Eyes all dressed up and I never got to see her in “Godspell”. Uzoooo! Finally\/finale, we realize that Shanice Williams was saving everything she had for her big number, which so unfairly (to the star) is the finale of “The Wiz”. Aside from “Ease on Down the Road”, “Home” is the most recognizable song from the show, if not more so, considering Stephanie Mills released it as a single and Diana Ross sang it on the movie soundtrack. It’s kind of a big deal. I can’t express how proud I am of this little stranger Shanice for how perfectly she performed her big song. I mean. Watching this show back, she must be completely and totally thrilled with how faultless it was. I hope she’s as proud as everyone in the world is of her. My favorite thing, besides watching a newcomer shining in her big moment, was how everyone in the Broadway community erupted on Twitter proclaiming that the country just witnessed a star being born. I love the camaraderie! Everyone seemed so proud of her! I love it! Overall, this was such a strong show and definitely the best of the televised live shows thus far. I am going to make an advance bet that it’s also better than Fox’s upcoming “Grease!” live because “Grease” sucks and they should have chosen “Grease 2: Back in the Habit” to do instead. For “The Wiz”, NBC and Neil Meron & Craig Zadan seemed to hear all the criticism of the previous two shows – iron out that camerawork in tech more, and hire actors who can actually do the job, not just Be Famous – and actually worked on fixing those issues. The cast here was hella famous, but they were actually incredible, obviously, because instead of like “oh let’s get Christopher Walken to do impressions of a stick being tossed by a light wind”, they got people famous for being great singers. That is smart. They also went for strong famous actors who have already been tested in musical theatre – Uzo Aduba was on Broadway before “OITNB” came out; David Alan Grier got a Tony nom early in his career, and he was in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, and he was in freaking “Porgy & Bess” with Audra McDonald, FFS; Stephanie Mills, &c. I hope a lot of this cast continues with the upcoming Broadway production, especially Shanice (she deserves it), Elijah Kelley (he needs to break into Broadway and stay there), and DAG. And Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo, though they’d probably never do it. And Stephanie Mills, because that would be almost as cool as when Kelli O’Hara someday plays Margaret in “The Light in the Piazza”. Suffice it to say, I am really excited to see who I’m going to see in the stage production. Almost as excited as I am to watch this again right now. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Okay, gonna say this right off the bat: this review won’t be as enjoyable as last year’s, because this production was infinitely more enjoyable than last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[188],"class_list":["post-4122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-travel-to-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"\n
NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Wiz Live!\u201d: Finally, a Great (and Powerful) One - Laughfrodisiac<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n