The Ruby Slippers

Author and director Rebecca Hutchings started to think about this year’s Faringdon Dramatic Society pantomime about a year ago, and when she couldn’t find a script that really appealed to her, she set about writing her own.  What she has come up with is a novel retelling of the story of “The Wizard of Oz”, fusing elements of stage musical, traditional pantomime and morality play, with steampunk overtones.

The particular challenge of “The Ruby Slippers” is that while it draws on different stage genres, it doesn’t fit comfortably into any one of them, which can leave the audience feeling a little confused about how to respond.  The links to the stage musical are clear, as the familiar story of Dorothy arriving in Oz, and meeting the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man on the Yellow Brick Road, provides a strong narrative thread.  Support for the characterisation and storytelling was provided by an eclectic mix of songs, but they don’t complement the story in a way that really tugs at the emotions.

The pantomime aspect got off to a strong start with Aunt Em, an entirely peripheral character in the musical, transported with Dorothy to Oz as the pantomime dame.  The issue was that there weren’t enough other elements of pantomime around her for her to work with.  Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West was a splendid baddie, and Glinda and Blunda effectively fulfilled the role of a good fairy, albeit in an unusually complex way.  And yes, there was a good, old-fashioned sing-along in Oz at the end.  But there was no principal boy, no comedy duo, little slapstick; and Dorothy was cast as an adventurous girl rather than as a romantic lead.  The result was that this dame, a classic pantomime staple, was sometimes left isolated in a different sort of show altogether.

The script included relatively few contemporary or local references, so no lampooning of politicians, and no snide remarks about other local communities.  There was also remarkably little innuendo, respecting the family-friendly nature of pantomime.  There was, however, some clever word play – I particularly enjoyed the Witch soup / which soup dialogue, and the false rhymes in the spoken verse – but the jokes tended to be quite spread out as there weren’t that many predominantly comic characters to deliver them.

The morality play only came to the fore towards the end, when the relationships between Glinda, the Wicked Witch and the Wizard of Oz turned out to be rather more complicated than I at least had imagined.  What has been going on in Oz?  Somehow I felt we were being encouraged to look to our actions and mend our ways, a laudable sentiment, if ill-defined.  We were certainly reminded that co-operation and collaboration is the only way forward, but I’m not sure that this fine conclusion was adequately set up in the exposition at the beginning.

The steampunk overtones were predominantly in the set and costumes: the stage legs were decorated with plenty of cogs and similar paraphernalia, and the chorus of monkeys was equipped with booster backpacks and goggles.  The choice of fabrics and colour palette reinforced the overarching design concept.

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