Wizards bring stage production to live TV audience
The Wiz Live! Thursday, NBC, City
NEW YORK — Peek behind the curtain at The Wiz Live! and you’ll find there is indeed a wizard — or three.
They are costumer Paul Tazewell and makeup artists Dave and Lou Elsey, who are turning actors into munchkins and flying monkeys and, of course, a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man.
The three-hour event Thursday on NBC and City has forced the trio to come up with looks that are intriguing but engineered to withstand sweat, dancing and quick changes. And no stopping.
“With most television shows, you have the opportunity to cut and to go back and re-film and perfect as you go along,” said Tazewell, a Tony Award nominee. “With this, there’s no opportunity to do that. It does need to play as if we’re on a Broadway stage. We hit the ‘Go’ button and there’s no turning back.”
On the makeup end, Dave Elsey, who won an Oscar in 2011 for co-creating the look for The Wolfman, has teamed up with his wife, Lou, to update the Oz creatures for 2015, but without having the slower pace of a movie shoot.
“The biggest challenge is to get everything on in such a small amount of time and making sure that everything is locked down and perfect,” said Lou Elsey, who worked with her husband on the effects for the final Star Wars prequel.
In another first, the broadcast will include a voiced description of its sights and action integrated into its soundtrack.
NBC parent Comcast says this will be the first live entertainment program in U.S. history to be accessible in this way to those who are blind. The vocal description is a narration track interspersed between existing pauses in dialogue that describes the show’s visual elements.
The TV musical stars 19-yearold newcomer Shanice Williams as Dorothy, Queen Latifah as the Wiz, Mary J. Blige as the Wicked Witch of the West, Ne-Yo as the Tin Man, Elijah Kelley as the Scarecrow and David Alan Grier as the Cowardly Lion, as well as Common, Uzo Aduba, Amber Riley and Stephanie Mills, the original Broadway Dorothy.
On the night of the show, the design teams will be drilled in how to get the maximum pop from a minimum amount of energy. After an anxious telecast of worrying about possible lost noses and excessive sweat, the Elseys plan to relax a bit, Dave said.
“When this is finished — and I think I can speak for Lou here — I’m going to (lie) in a darkened room with a damp towel over my head for about two weeks.”