Don't Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

Expectation is a tricky thing to tamper with. When going to watch Yellow Brick Road the audience should have been told to completely let go of any expectations of similarities to the source material, which the audience is told beforehand is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. As the play unfolds, the audience is taken through a journey which at first glance is very similar to one’s expectation of what The Wizard of Oz should be like: it starts with Dorothy in Kansas, then there’s the tornado, she lands in a place with “munchkins,” she meets the scarecrow, then the tin-man, then the lion, then they fall asleep under the witch’s spell in the flower field; but after this point the events no longer matches the storyline that was preset in my mind, whose only experience with The Wizard of Oz had been in performing an adaptation of the film in a theater in Venezuela. The events that follow after the scene with the flowers (from which there does not seem to be a logical transition, as Dorothy and the lion are simply left asleep) were a problem for me the first time I watched the play. After having seen the production once, I felt obliged to see it one more time, because I felt as though in my attempt to relate what I was seeing to what I knew as The Wizard of Oz I had completely missed out on the play. The frustration that my situation caused was enhanced by the fact that, while the events no longer matched the storyline of the source material, subtle elements – such as the green lights in the entrance of the waiting room, which alluded to the Emerald City of The Wizard of Oz – kept reinforcing the idea that, somehow, this was still the same story I was expecting. This was something that likely happened to more than one person in the audience, whose expectations – similar to mine – were not met. This, I find, was an issue with the way the play was presented, because an average audience would then have been unlikely to enjoy the play for what its true worth. Perhaps if the play had been introduced differently, by telling the audience not to expect The Wonderful Wizard of Oz then this could have been avoided, while still preserving the possibility for links to be made back to the source material due to the unequivocal similarities in the events.

The “true worth” of this performance dawned on me once I decided to let go of any expectations I had. The production is more of a simple sequence of scenes that allude to some sort of journey, which just happens to have a striking similarity with that of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This sequence, however, appears to be more symbolic than narrative. Through impeccably accurate sound effects to accompany the movement on stage and visually stunning movements, lighting, and costume, the audience is made to feel three identifiable stages of a narrative. The first, where the colorless, simplistic depiction of Kansas, the intruding loudness of the tornado and the inhospitable attitude of the munchkins, give the impression that the character Dorothy, denoted by a plush dog and an apron, is unsafe in a cold, foreign world. There is then an immediate break as music that one would relate to a jolly farm environment, a warm light, and the silly expression of the scarecrow create a humorous atmosphere. The humor and relative light-heartedness continues throughout the following scenes, as they meet the tin-man, the lion, fall asleep through the flower fields, and are then seen singing a happy song around a campfire at night. The light-heartedness of the scenes and the underlying humor of the scenes gives a feel of friendliness, and even without words, there is a sense that these four characters are now friends. This friendship is then reassured through the next two scenes where the group (together) does a slow walk in a warm light and exciting music, endures a barrage of fruit that apparently gets Dorothy all bloodied up, and together are rejected by the cold people in white at the waiting room. The formation and reassuring of this friendship constitutes the second part of the journey. The final part is one where Dorothy is left back alone as she started, and are simply the next two scenes, where Dorothy’s friends are each “captured”, one by one, by a chorus of abstract, inhospitable beings and then throws water at the witch to make her “melt,” and then is taken back to a circle of rubble which, by the fact that the house lights are turned on, one gets the impression that it is over (and thus she is back to Kansas). While the progression of the scenes does not seem to have a logical progression, the audience can still get a sense of a story being unfold, and thus empathizes with the situation of the characters, creating an emotional experience. There is a question, however, of whether or not the audience would be able to recognize the narrative sequence if they had no previous knowledge of The Wizard of Oz, or how effective the performance would have been in that case.

Technically, the play itself is also very well carried out. The movements of the actors are very precise, and the auditory elements that go along with the movement is consistent with the visual action. The way that it was carried out is also very interesting, since there is no spoken dialogue and the actors and the people doing sound are constantly visible to the audience, even when they are not directly involved in the action. The lack of dialogue and, instead, the heavy emphasis on physical movement in order to tell the narrative might be an attempt to create a sort of etic theater, a theater that transcends cultural barriers, an idea I have encountered once while reading The Art of Stillness, The Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki by Paul Allain. Allain wrote about how Tadashi Suzuki attempted to create, through heavy emphasis on physical movement and not so much on language, a type of theater that could transcend cultural barriers, as movement is a form of communication that is much more visceral and direct than language, which is interpreted differently by every individual’s own perspective of the world. It appears to me that the endeavor to rid Yellow Brick Road of spoken language was a step in this direction. The fact that the actors and the sound production are always visible by the audience at reminded me of Bertolt Brecht’s “Alienation Effect” and when during the talkback session on Friday evening people began to mention that they saw similarities between the production and the real world refugee crisis, this directorial choice made sense. The fact that the performance is made in the round, and that the intimacy of the space and the texture of the seating makes one more aware of the audience also adds to this effect of alienation from the events of the “narrative.”  The audience becomes more aware of the fact that they are watching a performance. However, the effect is not as pronounced and may not even have even been intended, as the effect does not detract much from the emotional experience of the play itself, which overall amounted to an enjoyable and very interesting experience.