Friday, March 4, 2011

It's Not Easy Being Green

I've been quite curious about Andrew Lloyd Webber's revamp of the MGM Wizard of Oz which recently opened in London. Today a video appeared of one of his new songs, The Red Shoes Blues, sung by Hannah Waddington who plays the Wicked Witch of the West.

I like the song  - but I don't think it fits into the MGM score very well. It's too character driven, and the MGM score just doesn't really support this kind of song. It's also interesting to look at this and realize how much WICKED is reinforming people's views of the MGM film. I really wish Andrew Lloyd Webber had just written a new musical version of Wizard from scratch.

But here, you can listen for yourself.

3 comments:

Sam said...

Hmm, that is a good point you bring up: the MGM Oz songs weren't really CHARACTER Driven, but they did still move the movie on making them slightly more STORY-Driven, but I never liked "If I were King of the Forest".

Like I said before on Oz Club, this WWW's number shows she is BAD instead of mistreated, and that to me is what I like! But I can see where her wig+make-up are connected to her head.

David Maxine said...

Yes, the wig line is very poor - In fairness she's meant to be seen from a distance, onstage - not in High-Def closeup. I'll be glad when people realize high-def doesn't have to mean sharp focus.

saintfighteraqua said...

Andrew Lloyd Weber has seriously lost his originality.
He should most certainly have done wonders if he had went back to the book as source material and made his own vision.

And I agree, this song just doesn't fit at all.