The Woggle-Bug (musical)
| The Woggle-Bug | |
|---|---|
| The Fantastic Fairy Extravaganza | |
| Music | Frederic Chapin |
| Lyrics |
L. Frank Baum Arthur Gillespie (uncredited) |
| Book | L. Frank Baum |
| Basis |
The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum |
| Productions | 1905 Chicago |
The Woggle-Bug is a musical based on The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum, with book and lyrics by the author and music by Frederic Chapin that opened June 18, 1905 at the Garrick Theater in Chicago under the direction of Frank Smithson, a Shubert Organization employee. The musical was a major critical and commercial failure, running less than a month. Chapin, however, had proven quite saleable to the publisher, M. Witmark and Sons, and many of the songs were published. The music director was Frank Pallma. The surviving sheet music was published by Hungry Tiger Press in 2002.
After the success of The Wizard of Oz on Broadway in 1903, Baum set out immediately to write a sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz; Being an Account of the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, which was published in 1904. The book was dedicated to the stars of the musical, Fred A. Stone and David C. Montgomery, who had been made majors stars by the show. However, The Wizard of Oz was still running, and Montgomery & Stone refused to leave it to do an untested sequel.
As a result, the story had to be heavily overhauled to eliminate the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, as the novel had excluded Dorothy Gale and the Cowardly Lion, neither of whom were major draws in the stage show. The Woggle-Bug is made the driving force of the story, when he had been introduced fairly late in the novel (Chapter 12 of 24), and did not make a major contribution to plot, only to characterization. His introduction is moved to the beginning of the play, and he is given a subplot about chasing after a checked dress with which he has fallen in love. The Scarecrow is replaced with a Regent named Sir Richard Spud, and the Emerald City is renamed "the City of Jewels," although it is still stated (if only in the lyrics) to be set in Oz. Glinda is replaced with Maetta from The Magical Monarch of Mo, as she had appeared in several versions of the earlier musical.
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