25
Jul
2011
As enjoyable as Countryside Community Theatre's The Wizard of Oz is, the most thrilling part is this: The witches fly. While L. Frank Baum's familiar story of the Kansas girl who's blown to the land of Oz by a tornado has its fill of magic, Countryside adds some magic of its own by making its witches (and a flying monkey) airborne. It's a special touch to a show that, during Friday's opening-night performance, proved to be a gratifying evening's diversion - if a long one, running three hours from beginning to end.
As if she hadn't already proven so in the previous three hours of Friday's Countryside Community Theatre performance, Christina Myatt left no doubt that she's worthy of the larger-than-life role of Mama Rose with Gypsy's final song, "Rose's Turn."
South Pacific comes to us with an intimidating load of pedigreed baggage: Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Rodgers & Hammerstein. And if you add its dramatic World War II setting, its themes of interracial romance and prejudice, its enormous scenic drops and set pieces, and its cast of two dozen plus, it'd be enough for Countryside Community Theatre's current production of the piece to be impressive, and it most certainly is that.
