[El Otro Oz (The other
Oz), a bilingual reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s classic 1900 children’s
adventure fantasy, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, presented by the Atlantic Theater
Company’s Atlantic for Kids, the division of ATC that produces programs for
children, opened at Atlantic Stage 2 (330 W. 16th Street in Manhattan’s
Chelsea neighborhood) on 13 January. (ATC’s
main stage is at 336 W. 20th Street.)
[El Otro Oz has a book by Mando Alvarado and Tommy Newman, music and lyrics by Jaime Lozano and Newman, and choreography by Alessandra Valea. The Atlantic production is directed by Melissa Crespo.
[The 65-minute production runs until 3 March 2024 (it was extended from its original limited run ending on 18 February). The producers suggest that the play is best suited for children 6 and up, but can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages.
[I’ve assembled a number of published pieces on El Otro Oz that I found interesting. I’m starting with a television news report, which first brought the play to my attention. Then a report from Playbill that gives a little background to the play and its ATC production, followed by two reviews, one of the current Off-Broadway staging and the other a previous production of the play in an earlier version when it made its début.]
“NEW TWIST ON ‘THE
WIZARD OF OZ’ ON DISPLAY IN ‘EL OTRO OZ’
AT ATLANTIC STAGE
2 IN CHELSEA
by Dave Carlin
[According to the Atlantic Theatre, the synopsis of Mando Alvarado and Tommy Newman’s version of El mago de Oz is as follows:
Click your heels together tres veces [three times] and take a transformative journey with this salsa, merengue, and Mexican folk-infused musical inspired by The Wizard of Oz. As her fifteenth birthday approaches, Dora, a contemporary Latiné teenager, struggles with her family’s ideas about tradition and dreads her impending quinceañera! But, when Dora gets swept away to a strange new land, she learns how to celebrate her unique rhythm and embrace her cultural identity.
[The Dave Carlin report below aired on CBS 2 News at 5PM (WCBS, Channel 2 in New York City) on 29 January 2024. That’s when I first learned of El Otro Oz.]
This story is about the power of live theater to help kids better understand their communities and culture.
The latest production from Atlantic for Kids puts a new musical twist on “The Wizard of Oz.”
Dora is her name—not Dorothy—in “El Otro Oz.”
Audiences are whisked away to an alternate Oz, with a soundtrack of salsa, merengue, and Mexican folk music, and it’s bilingual.
Kids fill the audience, like third grader Lucy Jones.
“I think everyone would love to see it,” she said.
When CBS New York first met Dora, she was at odds with her Mexican heritage, but by the end she was perfectly in tune with it. The director, Melissa Crespo [Bees and Honey (LAByrinth Theater Company, NYC); Promenade (New York University/Tisch School of the Arts, Artist-in-Residence); Form of a Girl Unknown, world premiere (Salt Lake Acting Company)], said she can relate to that.
“This material is what I wish I had when I was a little girl. We want to see ourselves on stage,” Crespo said.
“It’s funny. It’s fun. It’s entertaining,” Atlantic for Kids artistic director Alison Beatty said.
Atlantic for Kids is partnering with the [New York City] Department of Education to provide f[iel]d trips for more than 1,500 students to see “El Otro Oz.”
“After our first show, a mom and a teacher came up to me to thank me, essentially, and say my son doesn’t wanna speak Spanish at home, and after the show I turned to him and said, ‘You want to speak Spanish?’ And he nodded his head,” Beatty said.
“I think the message is [‘]represent your family,[’]” Lucy said, “and how we celebrate traditions.”
“El Otro Oz” is playing at the Atlantic Stage 2 theater on West 16th Street. The show runs through Feb. 18 [extended now to 3 March].
[Dave Carlin serves as a
reporter for CBS2 News and covers
breaking news stories and major events in the Tri-State Area.]
*
* * *
“HERE’S WHO’S STARRING IN BILINGUAL
MUSICAL
[Molly Higgins’s Playbill article appeared on 10 November 2023 at https://playbill.com/article/heres-whos-starring-in-bilingual-musical-el-otro-oz-at-atlantic-for-kids.]
Atlantic Theater Company’s Atlantic for Kids has announced casting for El Otro Oz, a new bilingual musical inspired by The Wizard of Oz. Performances begin January 13, 2024 at Atlantic’s Stage 2, where the limited engagement will run through February 18.
The cast will feature Arielle Gonzalez, Eli Gonzalez, Christian Adriana Johannsen, Adriel Jovian, Danny Lemache, and Nya Noemi. Melissa Crespo directs.
El Otro Oz features music and lyrics by Jaime Lozano and Tommy Newman, and a book by Newman and Mando Alvarado.
Inspired by The Wizard of Oz, the Mexican folk-infused musical follows Dora, a contemporary Latiné teenager. As her quinceañera approaches, Dora struggles with her family’s ideas about tradition, until she is swept away to a strange new land where she learns to embrace her identity.
The creative team includes choreographer Alessandra Valea, music director Andrew Sotomayor, set designer Rodrigo Escalante, costume designer Stephanie Echevarria, lighting designer Alejandro Fajardo, sound designer Germán Martínez, and prop designer Stephanie Gonzalez. Molly Foy serves as production stage manager. Casting is by Bass/Valle Casting, Gama Valle, and Gregory Jafari Van Acker.
El Otro Oz was originally commissioned, developed, and produced by TheaterWorksUSA. Then titled The Yellow Brick Road, the musical played a 2011 Off-Broadway run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
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“THIS YELLOW BRICK ROAD LEADS TO HER ROOTS”
by Laurel Graeber
[Laurel Graeber’s review of ATC’s production of El Otro Oz ran in the New York Times (sec. C: “WeekEnd Arts”) on 2 February 2024. You’ll see that Graeber writes of having seen a production of the play two year ago, a different production from the New York City début reviewed below by Matthew Murray.
[That 2022 production, which was presented under its current title, El Otro Oz, rather than its original 2011 one, The Yellow Brick Road, was part of TheaterWorksUSA’s free Family Summer Theater which toured New York City from 21 June through 10 July 2022. There don’t seem to have been any published reviews of this mounting.]
A reimagined “Wizard of Oz” follows an angsty teenager who disdains her heritage.
Every dramatization of “The Wizard of Oz” seems to offer a pilgrimage to the Emerald City. But “El Otro Oz,” the inspired and imaginative interpretation now playing at Atlantic Stage 2, introduces additional journeys that are ultimately more poignant and profound.
When I first saw this Latin-flavored retelling of L. Frank Baum’s tale two years ago, I was most impressed by its comic inventiveness. (TheaterWorksUSA presented it then as a revised, more bilingual version of its own 2011 show [see below] “The Yellow Brick Road.”) That 2022 production, retitled “El Otro Oz” (Spanish for “The Other Oz”), included a pet Chihuahua named Toquito, a wizard who’s a disco diva and, in place of the withered Wicked Witch of the West, the sultry, flamenco-costumed Bruja del Oeste, whose magical castanets evoke a predatory rattlesnake.
None of these creative flourishes have changed, but whether it’s because of world events or the nuances of Melissa Crespo’s direction, I found this new production by Atlantic for Kids (the young people’s division of Atlantic Theater Company) as tender and moving as it is ebullient and funny.
With a book by Mando Alvarado and Tommy Newman, and music and lyrics by Newman and Jaime Lozano, the show focuses on Dora (Nya Noemi, passionate and clear-voiced), an angsty adolescent in contemporary Chicago. More an admirer of Beyoncé than of merengue, the American-born Dora deeply resents her Mexican immigrant mother’s plans for a quinceañera, the traditional celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday. After she reluctantly dons a voluminous pastel dress for the occasion, Dora wails, “I look like cotton candy!” (Stephanie Echevarria designed the vivid costumes.)
Before long, a mysterious healer appears, telling Dora she is only “half of the whole.” (Christian Adriana Johannsen juggles this role expertly with that of the seductive bruja [witch].) Then the teenager is swept into El Otro Oz, where, according to one of its residents, her family’s picnic table has crushed the witch’s sister “flat as a Dorito.”
Once Dora acquires the enchanted ruby slippers, she must, of course, reach the wizard. But she’s also beginning to understand that she has embraced only part of who she is. As she explores El Otro Oz with new friends — the Scarecrow (Adriel Jovian); the Iron Chef (Eli Gonzalez), who travels with a food cart instead of an oil can; and the meek Mountain Lion (Danny Lemache) — she comes to appreciate the heritage that she has often cruelly rejected. The score, which blends mariachi-style melodies with emotive show tunes, offers ample opportunities for Dora to practice traditional dance, and young audiences may find that Alessandra Valea’s joyful choreography makes it hard to sit still.
They also, however, may have difficulty with the intermittent Spanish dialogue and lyrics. Atlantic recommends “El Otro Oz” for theatergoers 6 and older, but even adults who haven’t studied the language may find the mix occasionally confusing.
One point, though, is always clear: Not all travels end blissfully. In a vision conjured by the witch, Dora witnesses the difficult migration her widowed mother, alone and pregnant, made from Mexico. The versatile Arielle Gonzalez, who plays that maternal role and several others, sings a moving ballad that eventually becomes a mother-daughter duet. It shows that for many immigrants, a journey is one-way only. Home remains far away; all they can hope for is to carry its spirit into a new world for their children.
[Laurel Graeber is a contributing
writer and editor for metropolitan New York City arts and entertainment at the New York Times.
She has covered children’s entertainment at the Times for
nearly three decades.]
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“THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD”
by Matthew Murray
[Matthew Murray’s review of The Yellow Brick Road, the title of the first version of El Otro Oz, appeared on the website Talkin’ Broadway on 27 July 2011 (Talkin' Broadway Off-Broadway - The Yellow Brick Road - 7/27/11 (talkinbroadway.com)).
[The Yellow Brick Road, produced by TheaterWorksUSA, ran at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village from 19 July to 19 August 2011. It ran just over an hour.
[TheaterWorksUSA is a professional, New York City-based, not-for-profit theater for young and family audiences, founded in 1961, with touring productions that run through 49 U.S. states and parts of Canada. It developed The Yellow Brick Road, which has had numerous productions around the country since its début.]
Almost eight years on and Wicked is still packing them to the rafters? Assuming your kids haven’t already graduated from high school, they’re probably as tired of waiting to see the Wizard of Oz inspired musical as you are antsy about paying Broadway’s mesospheric ticket prices. But one show playing in town this summer, Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, makes it easier to split the difference: The Yellow Brick Road.
Okay, okay, so it doesn’t have Stephen Schwartz’s dissonant, pop-happy score, or even any spectacle to speak of. But this cute take on L. Frank Baum’s original novel, and its even-more-famous 1939 film version of it, has a unique point of view, plenty of color of its own, and it’s free. That’s not a bad combination in any season, but it’s particularly ideal when trying to think of original ways you and your children can fill time together.
Certainly, this isn’t your grandmother’s Oz adaptation, though given its spiritual resemblance to The Wiz, maybe it’s your aunt’s. But unlike that genial African-American version, this one (written by Mando Alvarado, Jaime Lozano, and Tommy Newman) puts a different ethnic spin on its story of a young girl launched away from home and into a swirling fantasy world: This one bursts with Hispanic flair.
This is more than just a gimmick, however. Librettists Alvarado and Newman have written their story of Dora (Virginia Cavaliere) to be about a young girl as trapped between worlds on Earth as in Oz. On her 16th birthday, she chafes against the efforts of her mother (Lexi Rhoades) to force her to celebrate in traditional style, completely with an elaborate party and a billowing pink dress—after all, Dora doesn’t even speak Spanish (and doesn’t want to). But when she meets an enigmatic, elderly neighbor (Natalie Toro) who thinks Dora needs a change in perspective... well, you don’t need to be chased by a tornado to guess how the rest of the story plays out.
At least there are some lively twists. Here, the Scarecrow (Ryan Duncan, one of the original Altar Boyz) has a head so full of mixed-up dictionary pages that he constantly confuses English and Spanish. The Tin Man is now the Iron Chef (Frank Viveros), who makes a mean paella but is afraid his food lacks heart. The furry feline the trio encounters is still cowardly, but he’s a Mountain Lion (and played by Cedric Leiba, Jr.) who feels betrayed by his own size. Dora’s tag-along dog is now a fierce Chihuahua named Gypsy she keeps in her backpack. Their task is to defeat the nasty La Bruja (Toro again), who’s upset that Dora has stolen her sister’s ruby-studded shoes—and their final confrontation comes by way of a flamenco-fueled dance off.
Lozano and Newman’s salsa- and merengue-infused score is enjoyable, if a bit exhausting (it packs 12 lengthy songs, plus several reprises, into just over an hour of playing time), and the numbers are thoroughly and energetically choreographed by Devanand Janki (who also directs) and Robert Tatad. Cavaliere captures the necessary sense of open-minded wonder for Dora, and Toro is a belty, over-the-top delight as the Witch; everyone else slides nicely into their roles as well. If Janki’s staging could use a bit more invention to summon up the magic of Dora’s journey, overall it will inspire youngsters’ imagination more than the sprawling stage effects of That Uptown Oz Musical.
What’s most interesting (if more for parents than kids) is the show’s overall outlook. Whereas both The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its movie were little more than adventure tales, The Yellow Brick Road has plenty to say about assimilation: when it’s good, when it isn’t, and whether it’s worth fighting for. Dora’s quest for identity, at the expense of (or perhaps in accordance with) her mother’s oppressive expectations, is one of the most sizzling political issues of our time, and addressing it, however indirectly, is risky in a format this essentially innocent.
But by not hitting you over the head with their argument, The Yellow Brick Road’s writers make their analysis of the situation one anyone, of any age, will a have good time watching and listening to. Even if Dora’s specific struggle seems, well, foreign, she’s a headstrong girl who wants her mother to recognize her and her ideals as worthy of not just respect but even admiration. What child—or, for that matter, what adult—can’t relate to that?
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