Preview: The Wizard of Oz

With a cast of 65 adults, 80 children and one dog, heading off to see the wizard has never been such a mammoth task.

Director Andy Johnston, says, “I have certainly never worked on a production this big or this ambitious. We staged the same musical in 2007, but audiences are not seeing the same show this year.”

For anyone not au fait with the musical, not to mention Judy Garland’s 1939 film version, The Wizard of Oz is based on the novel by L Frank Baum and tells the story of Dorothy Gale, a lonely girl living in Kansas who runs away from home with her dog Toto, then gets caught in a tornado that whisks her to Oz.

There she meets some munchkins, a scarecrow, a tinman and a lion, who head down the yellow brick road to meet the great and powerful Wizard of Oz himself to help Dorothy get home... But will she be able to defeat the Wicked Witch of the East to return to Kansas?

“The Wizard of Oz is a musical for everyone as it is one of the most loved stories of all time,” says Johnston.

“We have a very strong principal cast who have been working hard to bring their own personalities to these classic characters - this is very much our version of how we see the show.”

The cast includes Anna Chidgey as Dorothy, Rory MacLean as the Scarecrow, Laurence Aitken as the Tin man, Gary Gray as the Lion and Elspeth Whyte as the Wicked Witch of the West, while Tanya Williamson plays Glinda and Auntie Em.

The Wizard of Oz, King’s Theatre, Leven Street, 23-27 February, 7.30pm (matinee 2.30pm), £16-£20, 0131-529 6000