Adapting The Wizard of Oz

Reviews / Votes

The diversity of approaches, methodologies, and topics in Adapting 'The Wizard of Oz' makes it an excellent addition to film and musical theater scholarship. * Notes * The book as a whole is readable and useful to anyone interest in Oz, the discussed production, or theatre history more broadly. * Elizabeth Sallinger, Popular Music * Editors Danielle Birkett and Dominic McHugh have selected some first rate scholars to write about the many aspects of the book and its various stage and screen versions so that the book is full of fresh and little-known information. * Thomas S. Hischak, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image * With a variety of approaches represented throughout the volume, Birkett and McHugh's edited volume offers a valuable contribution to the study of musical adaptations. Additionally, the consistent accessibility of the collection and focus on a beloved film and related works makes this appealing for enthusiasts of the genre and The Wizard of Oz. * Megan Woller, Journal of Film Music * Birkett and McHugh have put together a package tour of the capacious land of Oz that leaves nothing to be desired. It has heart, brain, and nerve. * Stephen Banfield, Professor Emeritus of Music, University of Bristol * Through the wizardry of Birkett and McHugh and their team of scholars, readers of this wide-ranging collection can follow the yellow brick road with both relevant historical commentary and trenchant criticism. * Geoffrey Block, author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber and Series Editor of Oxford's Broadway Legacies * The famed 'Yellow Brick Road' has wound a devious path through U.S. political, social, and economic history from the first musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum's initial novel through Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's Wicked and beyond. It became a cultural icon and a counter-cultural one by way of the 1939 movie, and this splendid set of essays maps its various twists and turns in search of what might still lie somewhere 'Over the Rainbow'. * Tim Carter, author of Oklahoma!: The Making of an American Musical and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel * It is hard to imagine that academia or popular media could find anything further to reveal in L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), zeitgeist-famous since the MGM musical film of 1939 and still today firmly holding its place as an American cultural artefact, purportedly the most watched American film of all time (Schaller 2015). Yet in Adapting The Wizard of Oz: Musical Versions from Baum to MGM and Beyond, edited by Danielle Birkett and Dominic McHugh, the path from book to book-musical and beyond is traced in eleven unique new essays. * Narelle Yeo, Musicology Australia *