Pantomime: The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Never Woz , Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow Star rating: **

Trips to Oz - as in over the rainbow, not Down Under - are box-office favourites this year. But, as users of sat-nav systems will know, journeys can vary depending on whether you go by the shortest or the fastest or the most picturesque route. Guess what? Our three Dorothys follow distinctly different Yellow Brick Roads with the Pavilion production wandering way off the traditional path, assiduously distancing itself from both book and film by calling itself the Wizard of Never Woz.

The Citizens' team, however, never once loses track of the humour, pathos or underlying truths about growing up that have made the screen musical an evergreen favourite with young and old since 1939. This is the real deal. A caringly-realised production where storytelling counts and every detail colludes to capture our imagination, involve our emotions. A live band, tucked out of sight behind the rainbow, supports a cast who really can sing, with Pauline Knowles a warm, creamy-voiced Glinda and Helen McAlpine utterly endearing as a Dorothy whose very pluckiness has poignancy and whose delivery of Over the Rainbow has a wistfulness that is hugely moving. Andrew Clark's daffy Lion is a roaring success - especially when he goes into the comically cowardly cringes that make everyone want to cuddle him. But Sandy Batchelor (Scarecrow) and Derek McGhie (Tin Man) are no slouches when it comes to the knockabout fun or scary sides to the adventure - though, curiously, Cara Kelly's Witch looks scarier than she acts The same could not be said of Tania Foley, the gleefully wicked Witch who tries to snatch Dorothy's ruby slippers at Motherwell. Her roots, like the adaptation by John F Spillers, are in pantomime but here - unlike the similar departure at the Pavilion - the alternative approach works reassuringly well. So much so, you hardly notice the familiar songs have given way to other groove-along tunes, or that Kansas resembles Oklahoma in hoe-down mode - Yee-hah! (as we yell, in response to Andy Fleming's rallying opening cry). Fleming's Scarecrow is stuffed with hilariously entertaining gambits. Mind you, David Jonathan( Tin Man) and Neal Hutton (Lion) don't let him steal the whole show. Instead, all three work together brilliantly as a team, understandably befriending a Dorothy (Zoe Chatterton) who possesses the kind of bright-eyed charm that could lead anyone down a brick road of any colour. It's a heart-warming, breezy mix of polished music-theatre and gung-ho panto antics - a winner on all counts.

Perhaps it was the moment when Over the Rainbow lurched into a tum-ti-tum Highland fling routine. Maybe it was the umpteenth self-promoting reference to whatever TV show or radio station provided the cast with their day job. Most likely it was Russel Lane's dismal truncation of Frank L Baum's inspiring story, coupled with the tired old bits of funny business that the Pavilion passes off as panto jollity. But the Wizard of Never Woz is a lazy gather-up of sketchy references to the original plot and characters, padded out by weak material that a hard-working cast - Stephen Purdon (Scarecrow), Des McLean (Tin Man) and Joyce Falconer (the Witch) and Dean Park (Lion) - tries valiantly to pretend is worth their efforts. It's not. I swear the Yellow Brick Road blushed with shame.