“Because honestly, I’m not a serious director of plays, at all. “As soon as she took over, we started talking about doing a musical that really turned that theater into a party and a radically welcoming space,” Pinkleton says. With a stellar and diverse lineup of almost entirely local actors, ACT’s staging is directed and choreographed by Sam Pinkleton, the Tony-nominated choreographer of “Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812.” He also choreographed “Soft Power” next door at the Curran Theatre and the musical adaptation of “Amelie” that premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre directed by Pam MacKinnon, now ACT’s artistic director.
It will feel like you’re seeing it for the first time, because nothing will be tired and familiar.”
And this production I think excavates it fully and makes it completely new. “Everybody in the world knows ‘There’s no place like home,’ ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,’ all of those things,” says Danny Scheie, who plays the Scarecrow.
When you’re off to see ‘The Wizard of Oz,” you might think you have a pretty good idea what to expect.īut the wild, flamboyant version now onstage at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater promises to blow away expectations like a farmhouse in a tornado.
