Lions, Lions and Lions, oh my!

Do you have any particular memories of dressing up to act out stories as a child? Maybe just me? Dressing up and acting out films was definitely a big part of my childhood and I had the strong belief that the more costume changes, the better (films that provided particularly good inspiration for this activity were Disney’s Cinderella and Mulan). This fascination with costume and wardrobe changes developed and carried on when I was performing on the stage or watching shows. I'm not sure that it gave me the best fashion sense or sense of style, but I had lot of fun doing it.

I was fortunate enough to have a very caring, creative Mum and talented, artistic friends who helped make some truly memorable Halloween costumes throughout my childhood (it probably won’t come as a big surprise that I love Halloween and all big holidays/celebrations). I was Jessie from Toy Story one year, and other times Coraline, Violet from Lemony Snicket, Emily from Corpse Bride, Sally from The Nightmare before Christmas and a tiny Dorothy for a playgroup party in something like 2003 (with a Tweenies Doodles as my Toto in a basket). One year, aged 7, I dressed up as a wolf at Halloween (charity shop finds included furry, growling slippers that were my wolf feet!) and because of my stubborn mass of red curls, it reminded our teacher of a lion and I ended up being the Cowardly Lion in our 2007 school Christmas show, where we did an (extremely) abridged version of The Wizard of Oz singing together as a class. The photo at the top of this post was in local papers – what was that I said about sense of style? And this actually takes us onto the main theme of this blog, the recurring theme of lions and how lions kept appearing in shows and costumes, and strangely enough, how it was all in 2007.

For example, in September 2007, my Mum and I went to a Montrose amateur production of The Wiz, performed by the aforementioned ‘rival’ local theatre group, Centre S.T.A.G.E. This is one of the only times that I’ve ever come across a stage production of The Wiz, which is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz with an almost always all-black cast and which has entirely different songs and explores different musical genres. There’s a film version of The Wiz from 1978 which stars some famous names, including Diana Ross as a mature Dorothy, Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson, which I just watched for the first time and it’s certainly an interesting film, visually, and not really like anything else I’ve seen (video of Ross singing the closing song ‘Home’ at end of the post, another song that made it into Glee - season 1 - sung by Kristin Chenoweth, who of course was in the Broadway Wicked). The film of The Wiz seems to end with a very different message to the 1939 Garland Wizard of Oz – Garland’s Dorothy is so glad to be home she never wants to leave again but Ross’s Dorothy returns home ready to be a more adventurous character, one who wants to seek out new experiences, people and places. Unfortunately, I don’t remember a lot about seeing this show of The Wiz in 2007 but I had warm nostalgic feelings looking back at the programme, seeing some familiar names and thinking about how some people from school and even from our village, just outside Montrose, were in the show. Emily Wood, who was the Dorothy I saw in 2007, is in a band called Sorella in Montrose these days with her sisters Meghan and Lauren. Also, Brian James Leys, who was the titular Wiz in that show, has gone on to have great success in many professionals shows and tours. Looking at his online pics it looks like he has been in the Lion King which is one of the only lion themed musical shows I haven't seen live. I had tickets to see it in March 2020 in Edinburgh with a friend (hi Phyl!) but unfortunately the pandemic intervened. I hope to get to see it one day.

Another programme from that year features lions too as around Christmas in 2007, when visiting relatives in Leeds, we also saw an amazing dramatic production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (another lion-coincidence?).




I didn’t see a live performance of The Wizard of Oz musical until much later (2018) but the film and story has long been a personal favourite and has always been very special and important to me. I was lucky enough to be given a beautiful book of the story with the most incredible illustrations and interactive visuals. 

I also love how The Wizard of Oz relates to Wicked (which is perhaps unsurprisingly one of my absolute favourite musicals), as it’s really clever and interesting how they incorporate references and add a backstory to arguably one of the most iconic antagonists, the Wicked Witch of the West. Wicked will also feature later on down the road of this journey through theatre programmes (stick with me – I saw that later in 2010 in London). But next time I will get to my first professional musical programme of the collection (Mary Poppins in 2008). Join me for that in a week or so and find out if I can sneak a Glee reference into every post...