As part of the Palace Theater’s 100th anniversary celebration this month, the stage will embrace the Technicolor dreamland of “The Wizard of Oz” for three weekends offering three shows each.
The beloved tale that began as a novel in 1900 before becoming one of the most famous films of all time in 1939 debuts at the Palace tonight.
The story of the girl carried from Kansas to a wonderland by a tornado has been redone in such varying directions as 1974’s “The Wiz” and the “Wicked” musical that premiered on Broadway in 2003 before being adapted into a two-part film release in recent years.
Director Jackie Pualani Johnson said she chose a unique mid-century stage musical adaptation of the story for the Palace presentation.
“We humbly nod to the how the original has resonated through our lives and left its mark on the escapism we seek in the performing arts,” Johnson said. “We chose the MUNY version, staged by the St. Louis Municipal Theatre in 1942 because of its roots in the original novel. We may not have Toto or Flying Monkeys, but the Jitterbugs shake up the stage along with the frightening reverberations of the Wizard of Oz.”
Johnson said 175 people auditioned for the cast of 71 performers who will present the story at 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays through Oct. 19.
Though the 1942 rendition includes several eclectic surprises that loyalists to the Judy Garland film may not expect, the musical score still offers the sweeping, whimsical classic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” right at the start of the show, sung with pitch-perfect confidence by actress Tarani Best as protagonist Dorothy Gale.
“I’ve only been on stage for maybe five minutes by the time I sing that song,” said 23-year-old Best, a junior studying psychology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. “It’s also full-circle because I’m pretty sure the first production I saw at the Palace Theater (when I was 7) was ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I remember sitting in the audience hoping and wishing that one day I would get to play Dorothy.”
Best was raised in Hilo from the ages of 5 to 15 before her family moved to Washington state for six years. Now back in Hilo — living in her childhood home again and doing live theater under Johnson’s direction like she did at age 12 through Hilo Community Player’s Kid-Shakes production of Hamlet — Best said it feels as though she symbolically did click her heels and make it home.
“Dorothy’s experience of almost being sick of her home in a way, and then leaving and really missing it and longing for home, I definitely feel like I had that experience,” Best said.
“Our Dorothy fills the space with a sparkling personality that is far from one-dimensional,” Johnson said. “We see her tussle with wanting to experience something outside of her quiet farm life, then greet the unexpected with wide-eyed delight.”
Johnson added that Best “brings loads of heart to her role, connecting readily with her motley crew” of the Scarecrow played by Danny Randerson, the Tin Woodman portrayed by Lenx Neves, and Pomai Conant-Longakit’s the Cowardly Lion.
Other areas of the tale that the audience will expect and be granted include the welcome to Oz by a troupe of 26 Munchkins, played in the Palace rendition by local keiki as young as 6 who dance and sing to the classic “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!” before the dead witch’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the West played by Erin Chung, chases them off-stage screaming.
The stage at the historic Palace offers room for the tornado that transports Dorothy to Oz to be created by a group of dancers twirling with sparkly silver sheets, and set designer Heiki Wolf utilized both classic and innovative options to create the fantasy land of Oz.
“The most challenging set piece is The Enchanted Bridge. It spins like nine times in its scene, it is repeatedly walked in and out of by two actors, and spits back a rock at one point,” Wolf said. “This thing has gone through so many transformations and scrapped beginnings, I’m starting to think it might actually be enchanted!”
One classic of performing arts sets, the three-sided columns of ancient Greek theaters called periaktoi, offer the opportunity to easily create and morph between three sets with a simple rotation of forward-facing panels.
Johnson said the three panels of the three periaktoi in “The Wizard of Oz” will feature a tree on one panel, aspects of the Witch’s castle on another, and the final one left blank to capture light projections during the Emerald City visit.
Wolf said the tree panels create the backdrop to the journey of the foursome who are off to see the Wizard, and the Witch’s castle panels create the unique creepiness of that part of the story. However, she explained the main focus will remain on the performers and fanciful costumes hand-sewn by volunteers.
“There are so many great costumes in this production. This simple treatment with the periaktoi to just suggest different backgrounds is meant to celebrate those costumes and highlight the actors and dancers wearing them,” Wolf said, commending the entire cast and crew for “giving so much of themselves to the same vision to bring this shared dream to life.”
“The connections and support webs created by community theater productions like this one are special and long-lasting,” she said. “And when you top it off with a director like Jackie Pualani Johnson at the helm, you can’t get any further over the rainbow than that.”
Tickets to “The Wizard of Oz” costing $20 for general admission and $15 for keiki under 12 are on sale now at www.hilopalace.com.
Email Kyveli Diener at kdiener@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
