NCC’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ gets style from ‘Hunger Games’

If you took the “Wizard of Oz” and mashed it up with “The Hunger Games,” what would you get?

The answer will be revealed — at least in some form — this summer at North Central College in Naperville.

North Central College presents the its summertime community theater production of “The Wizard of Oz,” a musical based on the 1939 film featuring such classic songs as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “If I Only Had a Brain.”

Six performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. June 29-30 and July 6-7 and at 2 p.m. July 1 and 8.

There are 118 people in the show ages 8 and up, said director Suzy Craig-Olsen of Naperville. Two high school students share the role of Dorothy, she said. Several community theater vets are involved, and there is a chorus of about 55 Munchkins, she said.

“We have some really wonderful costumes in the show,” she added. “There are also a lot of special effects demands on us (but) it’s not all about special effects. I really feel this is about the story. People love the characters. We do have a couple surprises in store for everybody. It’s a big, big show.”

They even have an actual dog playing Toto, named Rykie.

“She’s going to steal the show, I think,” she said.

Although she is directing a large cast with lots of children, special effects and a dog, she’s not overwhelmed, she said.

“Every couple of years we have a show like this that’s bigger than what we had expected,” she said. “’The King and I’ was up there because it had that huge ballet in the second act that was a show in itself. ‘Hello Dolly’ turned out to be a really big show too because of the amount of choreography I had to put into it. Every year, we take on these wonderful tasks and … every year it works out wonderfully.”

The cast loves the show and are excited to work on it, she said.

“It’s a show everyone has some connection to,” she said. “I think we all understand that this is a classic American fairy tale that everybody loves, so we’re trying to treat it with a lot of respect. I think this is going to be a very memorable year. People really love it.”

Now, about the connection to “The Hunger Games.” She purposely created her Emerald City to resemble the mythical Panem from the popular movie, making the connection between the outrageousness of both the Emerald City and Panem.

“There’s a striking resemblance to Emerald City where everything is perfect and wonderful,” she said. “We started talking about the costumes, and about how shiny they had to be, and how we wanted them to be fun. And of course all of us had just seen ‘The Hunger Games.’”

The movie definitely inspired the play’s costumes and sets, she said. Costumer Beth Oechsel is “having so much fun with this,” Craig-Olsen said.