A lavishly priced ‘Wizard of Oz’ performance, with tickets reaching £75, faced a wave of audience walkouts and demands for refunds, as attendees labeled it the worst production they had ever experienced.
The Brighton show was criticized for featuring unskilled performers who ended up injuring themselves, abrupt pauses in the performance, and an inexplicably suggestive scene involving a cucumber. In response to the backlash, the show’s producer has stepped forward to defend the production.
Presented as ‘Wicked Wizard Of Oz: A Cirque Spectacular,’ the show ran at Brighton Centre on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of its UK tour, with ticket prices ranging from £30 to £75.
World’s Biggest Productions, the company behind the show, promoted it as a ‘breathtaking’ fusion of pantomime and circus performance.
However, many audience members felt deceived by what they considered misleading advertising, expressing that the spectacle did not live up to the promotional hype.
Critiques from the opening night described the show as lackluster from the beginning, with the situation only deteriorating as the evening progressed.
The Wizard himself opened the performance with a rendition of Happy Birthday on the piano whilst ‘technical faults’ were ironed out backstage.
Things finally got moving with an odd scene where two cowboys took turns to stack cardboard boxes on top of each other.
Wicked Wizard Of Oz: A Cirque Spectacular received a barrage of scathing reviews after its showing in Brighton this week
Audience members complained of amateur performers and unexplained lulls in the action at Brighton Centre
David Parker from Crawley, who watched the show with his partner and daughter, said the show was ‘so bad it was laughable’.
‘One performer did six tumbles and got five wrong,’ he told BBC Radio Sussex.
The group walked out ten minutes into the second half at the insistence of Mr Parker’s nine-year-old daughter.
He recalled one actor ‘eating a cucumber and spitting it on another performer’, and another ‘using a cucumber in a very provocative manner’.
Deborah Collins, another unfortunate spectator, made a break for it even earlier.
‘My husband and I left at the interval. I have never left a show early, it was that bad,’ she told The Argus.
‘It was an amateur production, completely mis-advertised. We thought we were sneaking out until we got to the foyer and saw hundreds had also decided to leave.’
Mike Naunton told the publication the show was ‘absolutely diabolical’.
‘I would guess half the audience left during or before the interval,’ he added.
Meanwhile, James Macmillan said the sound was ‘appalling’ and the dancing was ‘awful’.
‘I have seen better at a holiday hotel in Turkey,’ he said.
For Georgina Alexandra, the cucumber scene was the final straw – which she referred to as a ‘gloryhole skit’.
Production company World’s Biggest Productions touted the show as a ‘breath-taking’ interpretation where ‘panto meets Cirque’
One of the performers reportedly injured themselves in a fudged acrobatics move
Katherine Hollisey-McClean, reviewing the show for Sussex World, lamented having to stay for the whole performance.
She wrote: ‘After just 15 minutes of this bizarre panto/circus/musical, I really wanted to [leave].’
The journalist recalled the performance grinding to a halt for ten minutes while The Greatest Showman blared over an empty stage, before the cast reappeared without explanation.
The audience could reportedly hear panicked shouting from behind the curtain during the lull.
Keely Beecroft from Seaford was equally unimpressed, insisting the ‘awful’ show was a ‘misrepresentation’ of what was advertised.
She told the BBC that the lighting was dodgy and one of the acrobats even injured themselves during their tumbles.
The disastrous reviews continued on the Ticketmaster website, where on wrote: ‘This must be the worst production I’ve seen in a long time.
‘As I’m writing this, it is only halfway through and so many people have walked out.’
Another wrote: ‘Childish. The “acrobats” were very basic.
‘Lots of people left early and we didn’t even make it to half time. We feel conned.’
As the reviews piled up, Jon Conway, the show’s producer, was forced to speak out and explain the shambles.
He said: ‘Wicked Wizard Of Oz: A Cirque Spectacular opened its tour three weeks ago to great critical acclaim and fantastic audience reviews at the Winter Gardens Blackpool.
‘Due to unforeseen technical issues on the first performance in Brighton last night a number of items had to be cut for safety reasons and the show had to start 25 minutes late.
‘We acknowledge that some audience members were disappointed and will be contacting them.
‘However, more than two thousand people gave the show a rapturous reception at the finale and all issues have been resolved for tonight’s sell out performance.’
Daily Mail has contacted World’s Biggest Productions for comment.
