About the work
The Wizard of Oz is a musical with music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and a book by John Kane, with additional background music by Herbert Stothart. The Royal Shakespeare Company had the screenplay of the 1939 MGM film adapted for the stage; the film in turn is based on L. Frank Baum's children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). It premiered over the 1987 Christmas season at London's Barbican Centre, with Imelda Staunton as Dorothy. Compared with the film, it restores an extra verse of "Over the Rainbow" and "The Jitterbug", a number cut from the movie.
Plot
Dorothy Gale lives with her aunt and uncle on a Kansas farm and longs to be somewhere else; when their neighbour Miss Gulch comes to take her dog Toto, she runs away. A tornado carries Dorothy and the house to the Land of Oz, where she meets Glinda the Good Witch and makes an enemy of the Wicked Witch of the West. Along the yellow brick road she travels with a Scarecrow without a brain, a Tin Man without a heart and a Lion without courage to the Emerald City to seek the Wizard's help. He demands the Witch's broomstick yet turns out to be a humbug – in the end Dorothy finds her way home by her own power.
Cultural significance
The songs come from the film, for which Arlen and Harburg won the 1940 Academy Award for Best Song ("Over the Rainbow") and Stothart the award for Best Original Score. The RSC version has been restaged many times since 1987, toured the United States between 2008 and 2020, and is a popular choice for community, school and children's theatres in the UK and US.