Broadway tour of "The Wiz" at the Orpheum Theatre

The new revival of the 1975 Tony-winning best musical The Wiz is on tour and has landed in Minneapolis for one short week, and it's fabulous! This retelling of The Wizard of Oz through the lens of Black culture and Black experience features a wildly impressive cast with one power voice after another, an infectious upbeat score, a technicolor explosion of a production design, and an inspiring message about traversing a difficult world with friends by your side that help you find your own power, self-worth, identity, and home. A "Super Soul Musical" indeed! But don't take my word for it, Stephen Sondheim purportedly said, "it's the one show which makes you feel better when you come out of it than you did when you walked in," and that's absolutely true. I wanted to sing and dance down Hennepin Avenue like it was the yellow brick road. To witness all of that Black joy, and have it rain down on you and infuse your soul, is truly a balm in this dark world. The Wiz continues through December 21 only, and tickets should be purchased only from the official site here.

Broadway tour of "The Notebook" at Ordway Center for Performing Arts

It took twenty years for the popular 2004 tear-jerker The Notebook, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel, to become a Broadway musical, and now the national tour is playing at the Ordway Center in St. Paul for two weeks. And on opening night, Mr. Sparks himself was there to watch his story told musically, along with producer Kevin McCollum, who used to work at the Ordway. I don't think I've ever read the book, and haven't seen the movie in at least a decade, so I went into the musical without any real attachment to the source material. I found it to be well-adapted, with a clever and effective overlapping of the three timelines in the story, exploring relevant themes of memory, time, relationships, dementia, and family, with an easy to listen to and emotionally true score by singer/songwriter Ingrid Michaelson. It's also the rare Broadway musical that's less than two a half hours long, and feels just the right length, not overstaying its welcome. See it in lovely downtown St. Paul, already decked out for the holidays in twinkling lights, through November 30.