Pinedorado Follies returns with ‘The Wizard of CambriOZ’
Music, comedy and local reality collide in the 2022 Pinedorado Follies show, “The Wizard of CambriaOZ,” which takes to the stage at 7 p.m. on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights of two consecutive weekends, from Aug. 26 through Sept. 4.
Familiar faces will meld with beloved characters and costumes in a fractured-fable, tongue-in-cheek look at the tiny community, a North Coast “Emerald City” surrounded by a dense forest of pines and oaks, open land and the sea.
John Lindsey, columnist for The Tribune and retired longtime PG&E meteorologist, is a surprise, honored-guest member of the cast.
For details and tickets, go to www.pinedorado.com or take cash or check to the Cambria Chamber of Commerce, 767 Main St., or the show’s table at the Friday farmers market. Performances are at the Cambria Veterans Memorial Building, 1000 Main St.
Prices are $15 (students), $20 (general admission, the doors open at 6:30 p.m.) and $80 (for the reserved front-of-the-house angel seating, complete with extras.) A service fee is added to each ticket. Proceeds help support community efforts by the Cambria Lions Club, which sponsors the Follies and the Labor Day weekend Pinedorado events.
Playwright/director Randall Schwalbe based his parodied take on Cambria on the 1939 movie classic “The Wizard of Oz,” including some slyly renamed versions of Dorothy, her three famous sidekicks, the Wizard, the witches and other characters. He also wrote new song lyrics. Shirley Kirkes Mar is doing the choreography, and Jeff Mar is the musical wizard for the show.
Several of the actors take on two parts.
Kathryn Taylor portrays Dorothy Pale; Al Curtice appears as the Scarecrow and Oly; Ted Key as the Tinman and Dale; Otis Archie as the Lion and Sparky; Cika Cook as the Witch and Miss Septic Tank; Sunny Wright as Consuelo and Aunt BP; Joel Cehn as the Guard and Uncle Hathoway; and another well-known mystery guest in the key, appropriate roles of Oz and the Professor.
The ensemble cast of 14 includes Chelsea Conner, Renee Linn (who assisted Schwalbe with directing chores), Jerry McKinnon, Ruth Fleming, Schwalbe and Jeff Walters.
Show producer Bob Webster, the Lions Club’s virtuoso jack of all trades, also created the sets. Sally Webster and Linn created the show’s iconic costumes.
As the program’s disclaimer states, “Any reference to persons living or otherwise is purely intentional.”
Thoughts from the playwright/director
Schwalbe wrote in an Aug. 10 email interview that he drew his inspiration for his third Follies show from various TV comedy shows, including the 33 A-list movie parodies featured on “The Carol Burnett Show” (remember Burnett’s hysterical “Went with the Wind?”).
The playwright maintains, however, that his intention for the 2022 Follies was not to do a caricature of the 1939 movie classic, but instead, Schwalbe “used the premise to parody Cambria.”
After all, he had some similarities to draw from: Cambria’s Scarecrow Festival, the sponsoring Lions Club and Tin City, to name a few.
Once Schwalbe had the concept down pat for CambriaOZ, the show’s story came together “in less than two weeks,” he said. “The lines just fell out of my fingers and into the script.”
Among his achievements are new lyrics to the show’s iconic songs. His favorite number, however, wasn’t in the movie, but was in a 2011 Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway stage production. “Red Shoes Blues” becomes a “tour de force number,” Schwalbe said of the Follies version, noting that Cook “is doing a fantastic job delivering this soliloquy as well as her daunting character.”
Of Webster’s sets, which the director describes as being “astounding, far beyond the Follies’ repute,” Schwalbe said his favorite “easily, is the witch’s lair. It rocks.”
As does the 2022 Follies show, which has been defined in press information as providing “a delightful evening of surprises and aberrant nostalgia,” with the tag line, “remember, ‘there’s no place like the Follies.’”
