Andrew Lloyd WebberThe Wizard of Oz – 2011 London Palladium RecordingReview

Unless you’ve been on another planet for the past year, you’ll know that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Wizard of Oz has been on the way to the London Palladium, where it has now settled for the foreseeable future. This recording by the cast features Michael Crawford as Professor Marvel and Danielle Hope as Dorothy, selected from the BBC One show Over the Rainbow. There are new songs by Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to supplement the MGM film score as it moves from screen to stage.

The recording includes a fair amount of dialogue, at both dramatic moments and at the cues to the new songs, including Dorothy’s catchy Nobody Understands Me which precedes Over the Rainbow, prettily sung by Hope. The verse to that iconic song is nearly as long as the refrain, and its inclusion is important not only for the sentiments it expresses but in restoring the audience’s place in the storyline (MGM’s original intent had actually been to cut the entire song). All the familiar magic of the Harold Arlenand E.Y. Harburg songs is here on this recording, performed with great zest.

Rice and Lloyd Webber have the unenviable task of matching such wizardry in their new songs and, in Wonders of the World, they do so. This is a gem of a song sung by the Professor to Dorothy, who offers her his magic lantern to peer into. The tune is understated with a thoughtful lyric that takes us back to Rice’s heyday with Evita. "Dorothy, there are other ways / To see the world / So shift your gaze / To this extravagant appliance / Mainly magic, slightly science," sings Crawford in his inimitable style. At his departure at the end of the show, the tune returns as an instrumental reprise, a touching moment on this recording.

The other numbers are well written, although one might draw attention to some over familiar Lloyd Webber trademarks and an un-credited lift from Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain in The Bacchanalia. It’s a pity, though, that despite everyone giving it their all on stage, relatively one-dimensional production robs the listener at home of what should be a truly theatrical experience.