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Sometime in 2019 (I believe it was) I scored a pair of comped tickets to the see the National Arts Centre Orchestra supplying a live soundtrack to that most classic of classic family films, The Wizard of Oz. I was somewhat excited to see the show and m’lady even made a mad dash from the Ottawa train station to join me in the darkened hall, having missed the first ten minutes or so.
The funny thing is, as I was flipping through pages in my concert ticket book looking for a story to write this morning I came across this ticket stub from March 24th, 2007, suggesting that m’lady and I had attended the exact same performance a dozen years before. Imagine my shock!
I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. For more than twenty years I’ve taken advantage of my part-time position working video for the NAC’s Family Adventures concert series by requesting tickets to just about any orchestra performance that struck my fancy, and those somewhat rare occasions when the musicians were playing along to a film generally struck that fancy of mine pretty hard. It’s probably not much of an exaggeration to say that I see all of these sort of concerts, so of course if the orchestra had played along to a movie as ubiquitous (and doubly classic) as TWoO I would have been there.
As this ticket stub proves.
I guess the remaining question is: how could I have forgotten such a nifty experience? Well, after all these years I’ve seen a lot of orchestra shows, and I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz on television about as often as anyone has. So for me to unconflate (Separate? Sunder? Disjoin? Cleave? Break down? Disperse? Differentiate? Sever? Split? Rupture? Disunite? Divorce? Detach? Nah, I’m gonna stick with unconflate no matter what spell-check has to say about it) the two isn’t so surprising. Plus you know what? I go to a lot of nifty things.
Anyway, I went to the show, Dorothy and her pals were victorious, that sneaky little wizard learned a thing or two as did that wicked old witch, the orchestra was as great as usual, and of course those flying monkeys freaked me right out.
I tell you, if they ever do a reboot I won’t go see it. Imagine seeing flying monkeys that were actually realistic? Please Mr. Spielberg, leave it alone. I never did see The Wiz. Are there flying monkeys in it?
Todd Man Out 