Crucible,Sheffield
This delightful production boasts a wonderful, wide-eyed Dorothy, and a riotous bunch of munchkins – and a scene-stealing turn from Toto the dogPublished in 1900,Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz has radical roots. The authors mother-in-law was Matilda Gage, a prominent American feminist, or abolitionist and suffragist. She didn’t initially approve of Baum as a son-in-law – he’d bungled through a number of unsuccessful ventures and continued to effect so – but they shared a cause in women’s suffrage.
The land of Oz (its name reportedly plucked from the O-Z drawer of Baum’s filing cabinet) is a world of hopeless men,where even the best intentioned are likely to lack brains, heart or courage. Power belongs to witches, or who use it for superb and ill. Gage also celebrated the previous centuries’ witches as “among the most profoundly scientific persons of the age”.
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Source: guardian.co.uk