By Tessa Nolan
I drove up to the Lake District expecting rain. I got it, of course. That relentless, misty drizzle that seems to seep into your bones and makes you crave tea and cake immediately upon arrival. It’s the kind of landscape that feels ancient and stubborn, a place where folklore should live comfortably. So, when I heard the Theatre by the Lake was staging a version of The Wizard of Oz set right there amongst the fells, it made a certain kind of sense.
But let’s be honest for a second. Does the world really need another Wizard of Oz? It’s the bread and butter of regional theatre, isn’t it? It’s the safe bet. The programming choice you make when you need to sell tickets to families who want to know exactly what they’re getting before they’ve even parked the car. You can almost smell the plastic poppies before you walk in the door.
So I sat down in my seat, shaking off the umbrella water, with that familiar mix of skepticism and hope. I wanted to be surprised. I really did. And to be fair, for the first twenty minutes or so, I was.
Not Kansas, Not Anymore
The conceit here is smart. Sonia Jalaly, the playwright, has taken L. Frank Baum’s dusty old parable and dragged it kicking and screaming into modern Cumbria. Dorothy, played by Nimi Spiff, isn’t a pig-tailed innocent dreaming of rainbows. She’s a teenager. A grumpy, grieving, fed-up teenager who hates the scenery.
This felt real to me. I remember being thirteen. I remember thinking that hills and fresh air were just obstacles preventing me from getting to where the real life was. For this Dorothy, “Over the Rainbow” isn’t a magical land; it’s London. She wants the noise. She wants the Tube. She wants to get away from her aunt and uncle’s house, where the silence – and the cream cakes – are suffocating her.
There’s a moment early on where you see the weight of it all on her. Her mother has died. Her father is absent. She’s stuck in a place that tourists pay a fortune to visit, and she hates every blade of grass. That tension – the idea that your paradise is my prison – is a brilliant starting point. It grounds the fantasy in something gritty and recognizable.
But then the tornado hits. Or rather, the Lake District storm. And this is where things get… complicated.
A Patchwork Production
Theatre is a weird alchemy. You take a script, a cast, a set, and an audience, throw them in a dark room, and hope they gel. Sometimes, though, you can see the seams.
Sarah Punshon’s production feels like two different plays fighting for custody of the stage. On one hand, you have this surprisingly deep, psychological journey about a girl learning to manage her grief. Spiff is excellent at this. She carries the show with a grounded, emotional truth that anchors the madness around her. You believe her anger. You believe that she’s terrified of forgetting who she is.
On the other hand, you have a pantomime.
As soon as we land in Oz, the tone lurches. We get spangly turquoise Munchkins. We get lime-green citizens of the Emerald City. We get a barking dog puppet, Toto, manipulated by Vinnie Monachello. It’s all very bright, very loud, and very, very eager to please.
And I get it. It’s Christmas. You need colour. You need spectacle. But there’s a difference between childlike wonder and being childish, and I’m not sure this production knows where the line is.
I looked around at the audience on press night. It was a mix, mostly adults, some older kids. And there was this polite, slightly baffled silence during the “funny” bits. You know that feeling? When a character on stage is doing something clearly designed to get a big laugh – a pratfall, a silly voice – and the room just… watches? It’s excruciating. The humour felt cartoonish, aiming for a Saturday morning TV vibe that didn’t quite land with the people actually sitting in the stalls.
The Villain Problem
Then there’s the Wicked Witch. Played by Emma Jay Thomas, she’s got the look. The stage-engulfing black cloak is a fantastic bit of costume design – it ripples and flows like an oil slick. But the script seems unsure of what to do with her.
In this version, the Witch is trying to exploit Dorothy’s anger. She’s a manipulator. That’s an interesting angle – the idea that grief, if unchecked, can turn into hatred. It makes the Witch a psychological threat as well as a physical one. But then she’s undercut by the need to be a panto baddie. It’s hard to be genuinely menacing when the world around you looks like a packet of Skittles exploded.
I found myself wishing they’d committed to the darker tone. Just went for it. The Lake District is a rugged, sometimes scary place. The fells can kill you if you’re not careful. Imagine an Oz that reflected that – wild, untamed, dangerous. Instead, we got a neon fantasy that felt a bit safe. A bit plastic.
Songs and Stumbles
Musical theatre is unforgiving. If the songs don’t lift the story, they act like speed bumps. Ziad Jabero’s score has energy, I’ll give it that. It’s brisk. It moves. But lyrically? It felt cluttered.
There were moments where the characters seemed to be fighting to fit all the words into the melody. It’s a common trap in modern musicals – trying to say too much, trying to be too clever, and forgetting that a song needs to breathe. You want to tap your foot, but your brain is too busy trying to parse the syntax of the second verse.
Spiff handles the singing well, injecting spirit into numbers that could easily fall flat. But I didn’t walk out humming anything. And for The Wizard of Oz – a show that lives or dies by its earworms – that’s a problem. We all know the Judy Garland hits, obviously, but when you’re offering a new score, it has to compete with ghosts. And these ghosts are loud.
The Man Behind the Curtain
And what about the Wizard? Michael Hugo plays him, and again, there’s a clever idea buried here. In this retelling, the Wizard is a letdown. Just like Dorothy’s absent father.
It’s a harsh lesson for a Christmas show: the authority figures are frauds, and the people you’re waiting for aren’t coming to save you. You have to save yourself.
Hugo plays the bewilderment well. The high-tech lair scene is one of the few moments where the production design really clicks into gear and becomes gripping. It’s disorienting, loud, and genuinely impressive. For a few minutes, the stakes felt real. You remembered that Dorothy was a kid, alone, facing a charlatan who held her future in his hands.
But then we’re back to the jokes. Back to the lightness. It’s like the production is afraid to let us sit in the discomfort for too long. “Don’t worry, folks! Here’s a funny puppet dog!”
The Regional Dilemma
This brings me back to the wider question. Why this show? Why now?
Regional theatres in the UK are in a tight spot. I was talking to a producer friend the other day – let’s call him Dave – and he was saying that the risk appetite has vanished. Gone. You can’t put on obscure Czech dramas in December anymore. You need the hits.
So you get The Wizard of Oz. Or A Christmas Carol. Or Peter Pan.
But the problem is, everyone else is doing them too. So you have to make yours “different.” You set it in Keswick. Or Liverpool. Or on a spaceship. You twist the characters. You update the themes.
Sometimes, this results in brilliance. I’ve seen adaptations that cracked a text open and found gold. But often, it results in this kind of confused middle ground. You end up with a show that is too weird for the traditionalists but too safe for the experimental crowd.
The Wizard of Oz at Theatre by the Lake falls into that trap. It’s trying to be everything to everyone. It wants to be a local celebration, a serious drama about grief, a kid-friendly romp, and a modern musical. It’s spinning so many plates that inevitably, a few of them smash.
The View from the Stalls
Yet, despite all my grumbling, there is something endearing about it.
Maybe it’s Nimi Spiff. I can’t emphasize enough how much she holds this thing together. She has a stage presence that defies the chaos around her. When she’s standing there, looking at the Emerald City but thinking about her mum, you feel it. You forgive the wordy lyrics. You forgive the neon Munchkins. You just root for her.
And maybe it’s the venue itself. There’s something about walking out of the theatre at the interval and seeing the actual fells looming in the darkness, barely visible through the rain. It adds a texture to the experience that you don’t get in London.
The show runs until January 11th. If you’re in the area, climbing a mountain or eating your body weight in gingerbread, it’s probably worth a look. Just lower your expectations a notch. Don’t go in expecting a revolution. Expect a patchy, heartfelt, slightly wonky journey that eventually, stumbling a bit, finds its way home.
A Note on “Home”
That’s the core of the story, isn’t it? Home.
In the film, “home” is Kansas. It’s safety. It’s black and white certainty.
In this production, “home” is more complicated. It’s not just a place on a map. For Dorothy, realizing that Keswick – boring, wet, quiet Keswick – is where she belongs isn’t a defeat. It’s an acceptance. She learns that she doesn’t need London to be interesting. She doesn’t need the noise to drown out her sadness.
It’s a sweet message, actually. A bit conservative, maybe? The idea that you should stay where you are and bloom where you’re planted. A teenager might watch this and roll their eyes, thinking, “No thanks, I’m still getting the first train to Euston.”
But for the adults in the room, it hits a chord. We’ve all had that moment where we realized the grass wasn’t actually greener. Or if it was, it was just AstroTurf.
The Verdict?
I drove back from Keswick with the wipers going full speed. I was thinking about that moment when Dorothy breaks out of the window. The desperation of it.
Sonia Jalaly has written a play with good bones. There is a skeleton of a really fantastic, gritty drama here. But it’s been dressed up in clothes that don’t quite fit.
It’s a shame, really. Because I think kids can handle the dark stuff. They know the world is scary. They know adults lie. They know grief hurts. They don’t need the turquoise gloss to make it palatable.
If this production had trusted its own material a bit more – if it had leaned into the storm instead of trying to sing over it – it could have been something special. As it is, it’s a perfectly serviceable Christmas diversion.
You’ll see the flying monkeys (punky ones, at that). You’ll hear the songs. You’ll see the Wizard. And you’ll probably have a perfectly nice time.
But I suspect, like me, you’ll walk out into the Cumbrian night feeling like you just ate a meal that was filling, but somehow lacked flavour. You’ll be thinking about what could have been, if only they’d had the nerve.
And then you’ll probably go find some cake. Because, after all, this is Keswick. And some things are reliable.
