Ends tomorrow

The tin lady gets well oiled, the scarecrow ends up ahead and the lion takes up king fu. Yes, it's that family favourite The Wizard of Oz again, now more than 100 years old.

But, as the king fu bit suggests, this was an adapted-for-Hong-Kong version of the morality fairytale written by L. Frank Baum in 1900.

Renamed The Wiz and turned into a funkadelic, all-black stage show in 1975, the musical was adapted for film three years later, with Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson an unlikely scarecrow.

This week's version, based on The Wiz, is performed at the Hong Kong Arts Centre's Shouson Theatre by 70 young people, aged three to 24, as the centrepiece of the Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival.

With a bilingual script reworked by festival director Lindsey McAlister for local appeal, the show kept pretty well to the Tony Award-winning score of the 1970s, featuring catchy numbers like Ease On Down The Road and Brand New Day.

The plot hasn't changed much since 1900. Dorothy (Janine Romano) and her dog Toto (Tori Nassberg) get blown away by a tornado to the land of Oz, where she accidentally kills the wicked witch of the west. Longing to get home, the pair team up with a scarecrow, tin woman and lion - seeking a brain, heart and courage respectively - and trot off down the famous yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz.

One-liners are delivered thick and fast. Trapped in a field of sexy 'poppy plant' dancers, the lion mutters, 'I suddenly have the urge to do a little cross-pollination'.

The production was slick, although some of the key dramatic events were underplayed. Moments such as the killing of the witch were over in a puff of dry ice.

Romano's performance as Dorothy was by far the best of the show. If you closed your eyes you could be forgiven for thinking the 18-year-old was a seasoned R&B singer, such is the power of her voice.

Mention must go to William Yip for a creditable Oz and to Scotti Gibson for a particularly nefarious Eveline, the Wicked Witch - not that the other performances lagged very far behind.