`Time Again In Oz' Is Fanciful Theater Fare

------------------------------- Theater review

"Time Again in Oz." Book by Suzan L. Zeder, music by Richard Gray, lyrics by Zeder and Gray. Directed by Linda Hartzell. Friday-Sunday through Feb. 5 at Seattle Children's Theatre, Seattle Center. $13.50-20.50. 206-441-3322. -------------------------------

Most of us know all about the magical realm of Oz, and young Dorothy's journey there, through the perennial movie favorite "The Wizard of Oz," and the L. Frank Baum book it was based on, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."

Less widely familiar are the Oz sequels Baum wrote early in this century - a series of storybooks that swept wide-eyed Dorothy into ever more fanciful and fantastic adventures in Emerald City and environs.

It is from "Ozma of Oz," published in 1907, that Seattle Children's Theatre gleans its attractive and well-performed, if inconsistent, new musical production, "Time Again in Oz."

Here, Dorothy gets swept up into the metaphysical nature of time and its discontents - a heady subject, which Suzan L. Zeder's book for the show (based on her earlier play "Ozma of Oz") and Richard Gray's musical score struggle initially to make coherent to youngsters without a grasp of Newtonian physics and the concept of entropy.

Don't get me wrong: "Time Again in Oz" is no science lesson, but a colorful fable that hurls Dorothy (the sure-voiced Beth DeVries), her eccentric Uncle Henry (Allen Galli), and Henry's prized chicken, Bill (clowning Leslie Law), off an ocean steamer bound for Australia and into the time-free zone of Oz.

There, Dorothy and friends link up with the robotic Tic Toc man (Mark Anders), who looks like a walking watch mechanism, and who grants Dorothy the power to stop time - which she does in order to restore the health of her invalid uncle, and save the imperiled Oz and its pint-sized future queen, Ozma (poised and adorable Maya Sugarman).

All this doesn't always make a good deal of sense. But in Linda Hartzell's staging, it looks wonderful on Carey Wong's bright set, under Amarante Lucero's rainbow light palette, and in the eye-popping costumes of Susan Tsu, who makes dandy wearables out of wheels, Rollerblades and metal thingamabobs, as well as shiny velvet and lace-trimmed cotton.

As in other new SCT shows of late, the second act of "Time Again in Oz" proves more cohesive and dynamic than the draggier first. Whenever action or lively dancing (choreographed by Marianne Roberts) replaces chatter, young viewers get really interested - especially when Dorothy faces down a pack of threatening "wheelers" on skates, and the leering evil of a bewigged, fork-tailed Gnome king (enjoyable Robert Shampain) and his acrobatic minions.

And the standouts in Gray's score are not the more blandly ruminative tunes, but a rousing, witty ensemble anthem to the "national hero" of Oz (on Dorothy Day "the Munchkinesses/put on their Dorothy dresses"), and the Gnome King's spirited comic ode to greed.

By the end, the show does clarify its message about accepting the passage of time, and the process of aging, to a degree even 6-year-olds can take it in.

But it's the characters appearing and reappearing in puffs of smoke, and those wheelers whizzing by, that they'll probably recall best.