The Wiz is back for its third Broadway revival, almost forty years after its last.  What took so long?

Directed by Schele Williams and choreographed by JaQuel Knight, this revival succeeds because of the details.  When Dorothy (Nichelle Lewis) crashes in Oz, her house crushes Evamene, the Wicked Witch of the East.  A pair of cartoon legs sprout out of the wreckage.  Next, she meets the Scarecrow (Avery Wilson), who complains he’s no good at his job, and he’s right: on stage right, the crows are not just targeting his crops, they’re absolutely feasting.  Before they reach the Wiz (Wayne Brady), the group is waylaid by poppies, sirens with flared cuffs that spin when they dance, a clever echo of the hypnotist’s spiral.  The work by set designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Sharen Davis is superb. And the additional material by Amber Ruffin is good.  When Dorothy tells Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West (Melody A. Betts), “You just gotta free the people and lift the curse,” she replies, about an octave below her normal range, “All I got to do is stay Black and die.”

The production is not flawless.  I do think the choreography could have better integrated the physicality of each of the main characters.  The Scarecrow wobbles a little in his song—”You Can’t Win,” replacing “I Was Born on the Day before Yesterday”—but there was more room to make his unsteadiness a key part of the dance.  (Still, Wilson’s somersaults and flips are astonishing and a little frightening, as his head almost grazes the stage.)  The Tinman (Philip Johnson Richardson) gets to do a little more in “Slide Some Oil to Me,” since the change in his body is the subject of the song, but I would have liked a little more popping and locking.  And at the performance I attended, the orchestra was too loud, drowning out the singers.

Nevertheless, The Wiz is a delight, a true spectacle.

The Wiz runs through August 18th at the Marquis Theatre.  1535 Broadway  New York, NY.  2 hours 20 minutes.  One intermission. Photograph by Jeremy Daniel.