Believing in 'The Wiz'  Center Stage revives '70s musical in
diverting style  October 09, 2010|By Tim Smith, The Baltimore
Sun  Except, perhaps, for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," some of
us could get along very nicely without any reminders of the '70s
— all that bad hair, all those frenetically patterned clothes.
OK, maybe a little of the music wasn't so bad. Oh yeah, and a
few of the musicals, at least those by Sondheim.  But is there
really any reason to revisit "The Wiz"? Isn't that 1975 work
just an awkward and severely dated product of its time? Doesn't
it suggest the theatrical flipside of a blaxploitation film?
And, speaking of film, didn't "The Wiz" generate a stupefying,
impossibly dreary movie musical? That's got to count against it,
too, right?  Not so fast. It's a durable little show, after all,
as a determinedly upbeat revival from Center Stage reaffirms.
Whatever it lacks in subtlety or subtext, this new production
wisely takes "The Wiz" largely as it is — or was, when it opened
on Broadway 35 ye