It’s not often that Pittsburghers get to experience a revamped version of a classic musical before it hits Broadway.
Western Pennsylvanians will soon have that rare opportunity when the nationally touring production of “The Wiz” takes over Downtown’s Benedum Center from Oct. 31-Nov. 5. The beloved 1975 stage reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” featuring an all-Black cast has been updated on multiple fronts and will be playing theaters nationwide before it hits Broadway next year.
“The Wiz” is the second show in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 2023-24 PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh season following “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” which completed its Benedum Center engagement in early October. Tickets to “The Wiz” during its Pittsburgh run are available via trustarts.org.
“For those who know the show and love the show, you’re going to be really blown away by what we did with the music,” Alan Mingo Jr., who plays the show’s titular character, told the Post-Gazette. “Everything’s familiar, but we’ve added so much. It’s so much richer and sounds like music you’d hear on the radio today.”
Mingo is a veteran of both Broadway and Broadway tours who DC fans may know as Maura Lee Karupt on Max’s “Doom Patrol” series. Next week will mark Mingo’s sixth time performing at the Benedum Center following various stops over the years with the national tours of “Rent,” “The Lion King,” “Hairspray,” “Shrek the Musical” and “The Little Mermaid.”
He credited “seeing people that looked like and sing like me” in director Sidney Lumet’s 1978 big-screen adaptation of “The Wiz” as a major reason he felt confident pursuing musical theater as a career. This is now MIngo’s third stint in a touring company of “The Wiz.” Actor and television host Wayne Brady will be stepping into his role once this “Wiz” reaches New York City, which is extra amusing to Mingo because he once took over for Brady as Lola in Broadway’s “Kinky Boots.”
“I love the project for what the project is and what it means,” he said of “The Wiz.” “To be helping to usher it onto Broadway is the best gift I can get.”
Though the basic story beats of Dorothy’s journey into Oz remain unchanged, Mingo said this take on “The Wiz” contains a rewritten script and more contemporary musical arrangements that are “candy for the ear.” Expect less 1970s funk and more R&B, rock, soul, gospel and jazz.
Dorothy herself will be portrayed by Nichelle Lewis, a Virginia native gracing a Pittsburgh stage for the first time on Halloween as she prepares to make her Broadway debut with “The Wiz” in the near future. Like Mingo, Lewis didn’t grow up seeing many people of color in the theater world. “The Wiz” provided her with a spark of hope and became even more important to Lewis once she fell in love with Dorothy’s finale number “Home” after a college professor suggested she learn it.
Earning the chance to play an iconic character like Dorothy left Lewis feeling a combination of “honored and grateful” and “nervous as heck.” Her goal is to embody a young woman recognizable to audiences everywhere as Dorothy spends the show’s runtime easing on down the road toward discovering “the meaning of home.”
“Not all teenagers are rainbows and lollipops,” Lewis said. “We go through a rollercoaster. ... For Dorothy, that’s something I really wanted to pull from in my own personal experience so others can relate to her.”
Then there’s The Wiz himself, aka the man behind the curtain who Mingo said has been transformed into someone more slimy and manipulative than outright evil as he sends Dorothy and her friends on a quest to kill the wicked Evilline.
“He’s more of a slick con man trying to convince them rather than the bullying and scare tactics he would use,” Mingo explained. “For me, as the script changed, I first panicked and realized I had to fall in love with the character I’m given. The history helped inform me of how I’m going to do this, but it’s a whole different take.”
One of Mingo’s favorite things while on tour is to just sit back and enjoy the Emerald City dance sequence at the beginning of act two arranged by JaQuel Knight, who also famously created choreography for Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video. Both he and Lewis separately shouted out co-star Melody Betts’ (Aunt Em/Evilline) gospel rendition of “No Bad News” that Mingo described as “a showstopper” and Lewis can only assume makes attendees want to stand up and scream, “Hallelujah!”
Lewis said that everyone checking out these pre-Broadway “Wiz” performances has so far seemed receptive to this production’s creative changes — which, in her estimation, “it’s kind of hard not to” because of how jubilantly it celebrates a multitude of musical genres while ideally also making theatergoers want to “dance, sing or praise with us.”
“I think people should go see the show in Pittsburgh because we will bring so much joy to your life,” she said. “One single view, I think you’ll go home talking about for it ages.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: October 26, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: October 26, 2023, 6:55 p.m.
