London's oldest gay theatre company, Homo Promos is reviving its classic 1988 musical, Dorothy's Travels by Eric Presland and David Harrod.
It's a camp, contemporary reworking of The Wizard Of Oz in which two schoolgirls, Dorothy and Toto, are forced to go on the run after accidentally killing their headmistress. Pursued by busybody Mrs Mary Westhouse and aided and abetted by three gay men, the strange bunch band together on a quest to seek the help of newspaper columnist Marge Propps.
The show's back-handed tribute to the late Mary Whitehouse - in the thinly disguised Wicked Witch Of The West role - is quite pointed, explains writer/director Eric Presland. 'Whenever she condemned a show of mine', he says, 'it always meant we had a full house.'
The show's message is put over in a less than serious musical manner with over 21 original songs and plenty of colour. A formula which saw Dorothy's Travels nominated for a DORA award after its Toronto debut, and prompted the city's Toronto Sun newspaper to describe it as 'a light-hearted, but not light-headed, musical'.
Rabbi Blue is in the pink
