Review: The Wizard of Oz at the Lyceum, Sheffield

This is Oz on acid, a psychedelic cyclone of a musical – trippy, light, and breezily fantastic.

What it lacks in nuance it makes up for in technicolour sensory overload – a swirling, spinning, lurid whirlwind of colour, dance and song.

The Wizard of Oz, at the Lyceum until Saturday, February 3, touches down like a tornado in Sheffield as part of a huge UK and Ireland tour straight from its summer run at the London Palladium.

It really feels like a big West End production, a magical family show with all the same sense of occasion, sparkle and glitz as Dorothy’s glittering ruby red slippers.

The musical is a revival of a production Andrew Lloyd Webber first unleashed in 2011 – a reboot of the original stage productions which predated the 1939 Judy Garland film by some 37 years, with additional new songs to bolster the score of the Oscar-winning MGM classic.

In homage to its famous origins, it’s almost a hybrid of theatre and film combined, and relies heavily on big screen video projection (some of it so fast-moving and fluid it’s almost nauseating) in addition to the scenery: a giant can of sweetcorn spilling open on a Kansas prairie, the Yellow Brick Road an undulating series of flashing lightboxes, military-style choreography straight from the Pet Shop Boys‘ Go West video.

It’s a trip to the theatre, crossed with a night at the movies, mixed with an evening on the Xbox – all watched from a white knuckle ride on a runaway rollercoaster.

The part of Dorothy is portrayed with gumption by Aviva Tulley, a graduate of the BRIT school which produced Adele and Amy Winehouse, with a voice to match.

Her chance to shine in Over the Rainbow comes early – her vocals are clear and strong – and she plays a plucky Dorothy, loyal to her friends, brave in the face of danger, searching for her place in the world.

RuPaul’s Drag Race champion The Vivienne plays a mean – if far too beautiful, even painted green and wobbling on stage atop an old-fashioned bicycle – Wicked Witch of the West, with plenty of menacing cackles and broomstick pyrotechnics.

And Alex Bourne – last seen at the Lyceum just three months ago in October as Daddy Warbucks in Annie – is back in Sheffield, this time as a charming Wizard of Oz. As the tour continues its run until August, Gary Wilmot, Jason Manford and Craig Revel Horwood will all drop in and out of the cast.

The story is familiar, of course, and in parts it’s pure boo-hiss pantomime.

By contrast the simple, charming puppetry of the hand-operated Toto model is a sweetly sentimental relief from the blaring, garish assault on the senses of the rest of the show.

But for all its camp, kitsch, trippy exterior, The Wizard of Oz manages too to be a show with heart.

Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion’s quest to find what they think is missing in their lives shows us that, sometimes, perhaps we should all be careful what we wish for.

Home is where the heart is and as, Dorothy discovers, the grass isn’t always greener – not even in the Emerald City.

There really is no place like home.

• The Wizard of Oz is at the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, until Saturday, February 3