'The Wizard of Oz' — In Concert

Overview

In 2022, theatre production company Prospero Arts gave Brisbane a song-filled tribute to one of the best movie musicals ever made, bringing Singin' in the Rain to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre as an onstage concert. How does anyone manage to back that up? With another huge show for 2023, also offering up an ode to a big-screen favourite overflowing with beloved and well-known songs: The Wizard of Oz.

This winter, consider QPAC's Concert Hall somewhere over the rainbow. You'll be off to see the wizard there, too. There's never a bad time to pop on your ruby slippers, and hasn't been for the past 84 years since the page-to-screen hit first reached cinemas — but this instance is all about the music.

No one will be acting out the storyline, but you will hear all of the tracks that everyone has stuck in their head forever, including Oscar-winner 'Over the Rainbow', 'We're Off to See the Wizard', 'Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead', 'If I Only Had a Brain' and 'The Merry Old Land of Oz'.

As The Wizard of Oz — In Concert's talents sing under the direction of Amy Campbell, an onstage orchestra will play the film's score — which also won an Academy Award.

For those who've somehow missed the 1939 classic flick so far, it adapts the 1900 novel The Wonderful World of Oz by L Frank Baum. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale (played by Judy Garland in the movie) and her little dog Toto are whisked off from her Kansas farm to the titular realm, where she needs to avoid the Wicked Witch of the West — and find the eponymous wizard to make it home. To locate the latter, a stroll down the yellow brick road with the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion is on the agenda.

Running from Friday, June 30–Sunday, July 2, The Wizard of Oz — In Concert will put on five shows across its three-day season.