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    ‘El Otro Oz’ Review: There’s No Place Like (Your Ancestral) Home

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    A tender reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” follows Dora, an angsty American teenager who initially rejects her family’s Mexican heritage.Every dramatization of “The Wizard of Oz” seems to offer a pilgrimage to the Emerald City. But “El Otro Oz,” the inspired and imaginative interpretation now playing at Atlantic Stage 2, introduces additional journeys that are ultimately more poignant and profound.When I first saw this Latin-flavored retelling of L. Frank Baum’s tale two years ago, I was most impressed by its comic inventiveness. (TheaterWorksUSA presented it then as a revised, more bilingual version of its own 2011 show “The Yellow Brick Road.”) That 2022 production, retitled “El Otro Oz” (Spanish for “The Other Oz”), included a pet Chihuahua named Toquito, a wizard who’s a disco diva and, in place of the withered Wicked Witch of the West, the sultry, flamenco-costumed Bruja del Oeste, whose magical castanets evoke a predatory rattlesnake.None of these creative flourishes have changed, but whether it’s because of world events or the nuances of Melissa Crespo’s direction, I found this new production by Atlantic for Kids (the young people’s division of Atlantic Theater Company) as tender and moving as it is ebullient and funny.With a book by Mando Alvarado and Tommy Newman, and music and lyrics by Newman and Jaime Lozano, the show focuses on Dora (Nya Noemi, passionate and clear-voiced), an angsty adolescent in contemporary Chicago. More an admirer of Beyoncé than of merengue, the American-born Dora deeply resents her Mexican immigrant mother’s plans for a quinceañera, the traditional celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday. After she reluctantly dons a voluminous pastel dress for the occasion, Dora wails, “I look like cotton candy!” (Stephanie Echevarria designed the vivid costumes.)Before long, a mysterious healer appears, telling Dora she is only “half of the whole.” (Christian Adriana Johannsen juggles this role expertly with that of the seductive bruja.) Then the teenager is swept into El Otro Oz, where, according to one of its residents, her family’s picnic table has crushed the witch’s sister “flat as a Dorito.”Once Dora acquires the enchanted ruby slippers, she must, of course, reach the wizard. But she’s also beginning to understand that she has embraced only part of who she is. As she explores El Otro Oz with new friends — the Scarecrow (Adriel Jovian); the Iron Chef (Eli Gonzalez), who travels with a food cart instead of an oil can; and the meek Mountain Lion (Danny Lemache) — she comes to appreciate the heritage that she has often cruelly rejected. The score, which blends mariachi-style melodies with emotive show tunes, offers ample opportunities for Dora to practice traditional dance, and young audiences may find that Alessandra Valea’s joyful choreography makes it hard to sit still.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Cat Kid Comic Club’ Review: Tiny, Big Imaginations

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      In a musical based on works by the creator of Captain Underpants, an anthropomorphic feline urges young swamp dwellers (and the polliwogs in the audience) to let their creativity run wild.“Oppenheimer” isn’t the summer’s only work of popular culture in which atomic bombs detonate. The other such production, however, draws laughter and aims for an audience that probably worries more about long division than about nuclear fission.That show is TheaterWorksUSA’s “Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical,” which opened on Sunday at the Lucille Lortel Theater. This family-oriented romp, set in a swamp “right this minute,” features obstreperous tadpoles, a bionic butterflyfish and a sweet-natured feline hero — all characters that spring from the imagination of Dav Pilkey, the delightfully subversive author of such best-selling children’s graphic-novel series as Captain Underpants and Dog Man. Now the writer and lyricist Kevin Del Aguila, who’s also an actor in “Some Like It Hot,” and the composer Brad Alexander, who in 2019 winningly adapted the Dog Man books for TheaterWorksUSA, have returned to bring Pilkey’s Cat Kid Comic Club series to the stage.The new production begins as the tadpoles, who have been endowed with telekinetic powers, are destroying civilization, but soon morphs into a humorous tale of redemption. Cat Kid (Sonia Roman), a feline friend to all the swamp’s residents, has an antidote to the evil force controlling the polliwogs, and Flippy the fish (Jamie LaVerdiere) adopts them. But when they still prove to be disciplinary challenges, Cat Kid starts the club in the musical’s title, hoping that teaching the tiny frogs to create comics will help tame their behavior.Drawing comics certainly helped Pilkey, who has written about his early attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But just as his irreverent novels dismay some adults, the tadpoles produce comics — all acted out hilariously onstage — that horrify their adoptive father.Curly (Brian Owen) delivers one in which a failed baby superhero inadvertently causes nukes to explode, ending the world. And Poppy (L.R. Davidson) draws “The Cute, Little, Fluffy Cloud of Death,” whose lonely, lisping title character finds friendship with a ghost girl and her skeleton dog. (Emmarose Campbell created the dog; AchesonWalsh Studios did the other ingenious puppets that augment the nimble human cast, and Cameron Anderson designed the inventive set.)Now, parents who think gallows humor is inappropriate for the young may not buy tickets to “Cat Kid.” But they would be depriving their children of not only the wit of the musical’s book and the inventiveness of its numbers — they range from Bon Jovi-esque power ballads to bluegrass to rap — but also of its serious import.In addition to urging its audience to be fearlessly imaginative, the show promotes equity for girls in a subplot involving the combative tadpole Naomi (Markia Nicole Smith) and her smug brother, Melvin (Dan Rosales). The action reveals that Naomi’s prickliness derives partly from having to work harder for the rewards that boys like Melvin take for granted.But the musical, deftly directed and choreographed by Marlo Hunter, also endorses a more global inclusiveness. At one point, Cat Kid announces a lesson on perspective, which led a little boy at the performance I attended to whisper, “What’s perspective?”The show answers by demonstrating how the concept plays a role in society as well as in art. At a time when some communities are banning certain children’s books — Pilkey’s included — “Cat Kid” emphasizes the value of learning about diverse points of view and encouraging creativity in young people. And if what they create makes their parents uncomfortable? It’s not the end of the world.Cat Kid Comic ClubThrough Aug. 27 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; twusa.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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      Charles Hull, Who Brought Theater to Young Audiences, Dies at 92

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      The award-winning company he co-founded, Theaterworks USA, went on the road to introduce millions of students to professional productions of plays and musicals.Charles Hull, who co-founded Theaterworks USA, a touring theater company that has brought professional performances to tens of millions of young people across the country, died on April 14 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.The death was confirmed by his daughter Hilary Hull Gupta.Mr. Hull, who had been an Off Broadway, summer stock and commercial actor, founded the company that became Theaterworks in 1961 with the director Jay Harnick. For decades, Mr. Hull was the company’s managing director and Mr. Harnick its artistic director.The idea was to bring affordable, exceptional musicals and drama to children who might never get to see a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. By the late 1990s, Mr. Hull and Mr. Harnick were staging as many as 20 made-to-move productions in nearly 500 cities a year without the fuss, or expense, of a Broadway effort.The plays and musicals were short, the players nimble, often performing several roles in one show and doubling as the crew. Sets were minimalist and versatile, adaptable to a plethora of venues. “The term we use is cafegymatorium,” Michael Harrington, Theaterworks’ current executive director, said in a phone interview.According to Mr. Hull, only pared-down productions were viable.“If you have to have a crew of 10 to set up a show, there’s no way you can do it,” he told The New York Times in 1996. “The cast in our shows, from six to eight people, are the crew. They put up a set, and in an hour, there you are. If the show is good, you don’t need all those tons of Andrew Lloyd Webber things.”Many shows were biographical, about luminaries like Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson and Pocahontas. Others were literary adaptations of childhood favorites, like the Magic School Bus books, or of more adult fare, like “Don Quixote.” They tackled difficult topics, among them slavery, addiction and racism, without talking down to their audience.“Theaterworks productions are professional, highly entertaining and never condescending,” The Christian Science Monitor said in 1986.In 2005, The Times wrote that “the company has developed a strong reputation as a reliable source of intelligent and well-acted productions for young audiences.”Theaterworks did not just introduce young people to theater — it also introduced up-and-coming actors, composers, directors and writers to show business. The company’s alumni include the actors F. Murray Abraham and Henry Winkler, the four-time Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks and the Tony-winning lyricist Lynn Ahrens.A scene from a 1992 production of “From Sea to Shining Sea.” The productions were stripped down, and the actors served as the stage crew.William E. Sauro/The New York TimesThe company was successful and prolific. Mr. Harrington, the executive director, said it had created 148 shows and performed for more than 100 million young people, playing in every state except Hawaii. The company has received special Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards for its work in children’s theater, among other honors.Mr. Hull was born Karl Rudolf Horvat on March 3, 1931, in Vienna, the only child of Bernard and Hermine (Mayr) Horvat. His father owned a jewelry store, which was confiscated by the Nazis after they annexed Austria in 1938.The Horvat family fled West — Karl, who had blonde hair and blue eyes, smuggled jewelry in his clothing, his family said — and eventually settled in East Orange, N.J., where a relative encouraged them to Americanize their names. Mr. Hull’s father died a few years after they arrived, and his mother became a real estate agent.Mr. Hull attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania on a football scholarship and graduated with a degree in business administration in 1953. He served as a lieutenant in the Air Force in England until 1955, when he accepted a sales job with a steel company in Ohio.Throughout his military service and his years as a salesman, Mr. Hull honed his skills as an actor, taking parts in amateur and community theater. In his late 20s, he traded his steady job for a life as an actor and moved to New York City. He studied under Lee Strasberg and acted in Off Broadway and summer stock productions.Charles Hull in 1968. The idea for Theaterworks started with a Broadway flop seven years earlier.via Hull familyTheaterworks sprang from a Broadway flop.The catalyst was “Young Abe Lincoln,” a musical that Mr. Harnick directed and which Mr. Hull joined as an actor. After a successful Off Broadway run, the show moved to Broadway. It earned effusive reviews but lasted only 27 performances.After consulting with friends, Mr. Harnick and Mr. Hull began booking the show in schools around New York State. In the late 1960s, they registered the company as the Performing Arts Repertory Theater, which they later changed to Theaterworks USA.In addition to Ms. Hull Gupta, Mr. Hull is survived by his wife, Ann (O’Shaughnessy) Hull; another daughter, Alizon Hull Reggioli; and three grandchildren.For Mr. Hull, Theaterworks was a calling more than an occupation. For many years, his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan served as its office. When the company faced financial headwinds, he acted in television commercials for companies like Chevrolet and Amoco to help his family stay afloat.And although he and Mr. Harnick officially retired in 2000, Mr. Hull kept coming into the office for almost two more decades.He was “really ambitious and passionate about the mission of the organization,” Mr. Harrington said. More

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      Exploring Race and Resistance for Young Audiences

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookExploring Race and Resistance for Young AudiencesA Harriet Tubman monologue, an animated “Sit-In” and a toy theater short about medical inequity deliver useful messages through varied mediums.Janet (center) intends to stage a protest over climate change in the animated “Sit-In.”Credit…via Alliance TheaterFeb. 9, 2021How can you build a hopeful future without first learning from the painful past?This question, which has arisen repeatedly over the last year, resonates in three new streaming theater productions for young people. Directed toward audiences 9 and older, each uses African-American history to reflect on current issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. Frequently unsparing in detail — and even in language — these works should inspire discussions well beyond Black History Month.“A Tribe Called Tubman,” from TheaterWorksUSA, is the most fully realized, incisive and moving of the shows, both because of its length — 42 minutes — and its reliance on an actor’s presence. (The other productions feature animation or puppetry.) Available indefinitely on TWUSA.TV, a platform that the company developed for its own work and that of other family-theater producers, the play stars Jada Suzanne Dixon as a serene and commanding Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became a leader of the Underground Railroad. (You must wait until the end to discover the identity of the tribe in the title.)Jada Suzanne Dixon as the title character in Idris Goodwin’s “A Tribe Called Tubman.”Credit…via TheaterWorksUSACasually dressed in contemporary clothes, Dixon spends much of her time in a simple black chair. But she doesn’t need to stride the stage. Written and directed by Idris Goodwin, the play refuses to enshrine Tubman as a towering heroine of near-mythical powers. “What if I was just as ordinary as anyone else?” she asks.Speaking conversationally and occasionally singing, she relates her experiences, which were far from ordinary. But they were human, and in portraying her as a flesh-and-blood woman, the script demonstrates that it is courageous people, not gods, who bring about social change.The show does, however, have a mystical side. Tubman says she has died twice and will die again. The first time was when her skull was struck by a metal bar thrown by an overseer trying to stop a fleeing slave. (Imitating that white man’s rage, she shouts the ugliest of racial slurs.) The second occasion was when she succumbed to pneumonia in 1913. And why is she here again?“The knee is still on our necks,” says Tubman, who was often called Moses. Having advised young audiences on how to pursue justice, she adds, “Maybe what I am now is that burning bush.”The Alliance Theater decided to animate Pearl Cleage’s “Sit-In” script when live performance became impossible.Credit…via Alliance TheaterAnother incendiary phrase — “Our house is on fire” — propels “Sit-In,” produced by Alliance Theater in Atlanta. This statement refers to global warming rather than civil rights, although Janet (Eden Luse), an 11-year-old African-American girl, soon learns how the struggles surrounding these issues are related.Janet finds herself in conflict with her best friends, Mary Beth (Bella Fraker) and Consuelo (Lena Castro), after she tells them she can’t be part of their singing trio at the talent show because she intends to stage a school sit-in about climate change. Consuelo retaliates by saying she won’t sing with Janet at an upcoming rally.Torn, and facing opposition at home and at school — she’s threatened with expulsion — Janet resolves her dilemma only after talking to her grandfather (L Warren Young), who tells her of his own participation in the Atlanta Student Movement in 1960.Inspired by “Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down,” a picture book created by the married couple Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, the play artfully transforms a true story of young Black men 60 years ago into a dramatic narrative about three contemporary girls of varying ethnicities.Faced with the Covid lockdown, the playwright Pearl Cleage and the director Mark Valdez worked with Alliance and the Palette Group to turn the production into a 33-minute animated film. The result incorporates a rich soundtrack (by Eugene H. Russell IV) and a vivid interplay of images, including gritty footage of the real 1960s lunch counter sit-ins.Streaming on Alliance’s website and on TWUSA.TV through June 30, “Sit-In” educates and entertains, though I wish it had been longer. The play illustrates that protest carries risks, but ends before you learn the consequences of the 21st-century student activism it depicts.The set and characters in “Diamond’s Dream,” like this image inside a train car, are constructed from detailed cutouts.Credit…via Chicago Children’s TheaterThe visually mesmerizing “Diamond’s Dream,” presented by Chicago Children’s Theater, is even shorter — just under 18 minutes. Created by Jerrell L. Henderson (who also directed) and Caitlin McLeod (who designed it), this toy theater production features a set and characters constructed from meticulously detailed cutouts. The scrolling painterly backdrops and Daniel Ison’s soundtrack enhance the feeling that you’re inside an L train in Chicago.The play, which streams free on the company’s YouTube channel, CCTv, through June 22, unfolds in the present day, when Diamond (Davu Smith), an African-American youth wearing a surgical mask, is on his way to visit his dying grandmother. (Whether she has Covid-19 is unclear.) After dozing in his empty train car, he suddenly encounters a Black girl (Amira Danan), who tells him she’s a lost spirit who can’t recall her identity. She remembers only how “the colored people got hit by the flu, the big flu” and how “an angry mob” arrived as she was dying.The “big flu” is the 1918 pandemic, and the “angry mob” refers to attacks by white rioters during what is now known as the Red Summer of 1919, but children are unlikely to grasp this unless they consult an accompanying online study guide. And although the production offers an emotional resolution, it still feels like only a tantalizing taste of what deserved to be a bigger project. Parents and teachers will have to help young viewers investigate the subjects — racial inequities in housing and health care, the disproportionate effects of disease on minorities — that “Diamond’s Dream” raises yet doesn’t fully explore.What can’t be ignored is that these historical struggles continue. Or, as Harriet Tubman puts it in Goodwin’s play, “The scars are still fresh.”A Tribe Called TubmanOn TWUSA.TVSit-InThrough June 30; alliancetheatre.orgDiamond’s DreamOn YouTube through June 22; chicagochildrenstheatre.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More