A.K. Wregg Reimagines Dorothy In Oz With Magic And Cocktails

The emphasis is on the interactive and unpredictable as we count the minutes before the curtain rises on the 2025 Sydney Fringe Festival extravaganza.    

First animal off the ark this year is A.K. Wregg’s Dorothy in Oz: An Immersive Cocktail Adventure, which makes its world premiere run from 3 to 28 September. The Sydney-born director’s outrageous concept of Oz will headline the debut of Fringe Fest’s Cabaret Hub at Marrickville’s entirely under-appreciated Town Hall.

Wregg’s latest piece of participatory drama follows the international success of Alice: An Immersive Cocktail Adventure, which has run amok in the United States and beyond for the last few years.

Punching through the ‘just looking’ glass

A.K. Wregg grew up in a dramatic household. With an actual Diva for a mother and a profoundly theatrical father, Alex had read the entire 14 volume oeuvre of L. Frank Baum’s Lands of Oz before he was Dorothy’s age.

As part of Wregg’s pre-rehearsal pep talk, the Aussie Oz Expert told cast and crew that the first ever stage production of Oz predated MGM’s technicolour effort by almost 40 years.

“And that was a musical in 1902,” he says.

Six years later, Baum put up his own money to create a massive multimedia epic incorporating the earliest uses of film and photography, live music and performers. 

“Unfortunately,” Wregg says, “the ambition was also expensive. Baum was bankrupt after a few months of playing to packed audiences. So there is a long and not always celebrated history of creatives being inspired to present the ideas of Oz in formats which embrace the great fantasy of the story.”

Oz is not Wregg’s first interactive rodeo

Wregg says his immersive experience shows have now sold over 75,000 tickets across five countries and in more than 30 cities, from New York to Sydney and old London etc. And yes, even Auckland.

The former screenwriter’s earlier interactive experiences and productions – The Wizard’s Den, The Art of Murder – are where he refined his ideas of erasing the fourth wall in favour of creating adventures where spectators become participants.

Wregg says interactive theatre has been around as long as theatre itself, though the blurred lines are quickly becoming removed altogether. And in a world where a potty-mouthed Marvel mass murderer can regularly break the cinematic box office by cutting the strings on any suspended disbelief, it’s understandable that interactive theatrical experiences are going mainstream.

Today, interactive/immersive theatre isn’t merely a performance which lowers the fourth wall and encourages audience participation. But, as Wregg says, “It’s an experience. But a highly personal participatory experience, where the pleasure is about cracking open the bones of theatre and sucking out the marrow.”

And that sweet marrow is when the individual enters the action.

Faffing about with the fourth wall: a brief history

For those of us who don’t get through the day narrating our own thoughts, theatre’s fourth wall refers to the shared convention which, although unspoken and invisible, allows actors to stay beyond their audience and allows an audience to easily ‘suspend their disbelief’ that the guy in tights with the plastic sword is indeed Henry V. 

We break through said fourth wall when a character acknowledges the presence of the audience and leaves the safety of the performance. The produced effect is most often equal parts shock and wonder.

According to my dusty UNSW Theatre and Film degree, the true birth of modern immersive theatre sprang, fully-conceived out of Brazil, thanks to the innumerable undergraduate essays which laud the antics of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

Boal’s theatre was a space where real people could explore and rehearse for real world change. Social, political and even psychological oppression could be exercised by participation. Boal rounded on ‘bystander apathy,’ encouraging each audience member to become involved in and ideally challenge the direction of the performance.

While me old mate Augusto Boal found swift international traction around the same time Aussies were watching The Goodies and listening to the ironic honesty of ska legends Madness, breaking that fourth wall goes right back to Athens where the Ancient Greek amphitheatres were filled with the original rule breaker Aristophanes (The Birds) and his ornithological ilk.

Shakespeare’s dialogue with the rogues of The Globe was not only about enhancing the tension between character and audience, but always offered a subtext of soliloquies, nods, winks and asides which slipped the fourth wall and spoke directly to the audience to play up to those on stage and the audience as a way to deepen the theatrical experience.

Magical Magical Marrickville

Meanwhile back in the inner west, Wregg says a very restricted audience will step into a Kansas Bar and share a cocktail with a sepia-toned Dorothy. Then they’ll be whisked away to Oz for Princess Ozma’s birthday party – just one among 30 honoured guests.

According to Sydney Fringe’s Artistic Director and CEO, Patrick Kennedy, Dorothy in Oz: An Immersive Cocktail Adventure will break ground in Marrickville for the first time in the festival’s history, where over fifty cabaret, comedy and immersive experiences await this year’s Fringe dwellers.

“We’re proud to launch our new Cabaret Hub at Marrickville Town Hall with Dorothy in Oz, an innovative new immersive production from a brilliant generation of theatre makers,” says Kennedy. “Supporting independent voices like these is at the heart of Sydney Fringe, and we’re thrilled to see this vibrant reimagining of a classic story brought to life through our partnership with our longest-standing supporter, Inner West Council.”

The kids are absolutely alright

The immersion begins gently, and there is no stage to divide the audience from the action. Together, participants can sit back or solve puzzles. They will be able to interact with Wregg’s recreations of the familiar (Tinman et al) and less familiar (Glinda, and the wicked Mombi).

The magic potions are cocktails, and the action unwinds from every direction. And while everyone knows of Oz, Wregg says he’s particularly pumped to offer audiences an entirely original Baum story.

“The story retains elements that people recognise and love from the films. But also introduces them to the broader world of Oz and the glorious, weird and wonderful elements hidden away in the books.”

With Dorothy adding a rich vein of performance magic à la David Copperfield, there’s also a string of matinee performances for younger audiences.

Wregg, suddenly the Wicked Witch of the Inner West, clasps hands and smiles. “Oh yeah. The kids are going to totally lose their minds.”

Dorothy In Oz: An Immersive Cocktail Adventure makes its world premiere on 3 September and runs to 28 September as part of the Sydney Fringe 2025. Cabaret Hub, Marrickville Town Hall, 303 Marrickville Road Marrickville NSW 2204.

Tickets: https://sydneyfringe.com/events/dorothy-in-oz/

Website: https://www.dorothyinoz.com/

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/dorothyinoztheshow/

Images supplied.

Performance Warnings:
Strobe Lighting. Physical Contact with Audience Members. This is an interactive experience. Performers will speak to audience members directly. Attendees will be required to physically move through the space.

Creative Team
Writer and Director: Alex Wregg
Production Design: Paul Bujak (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Last King of the Cross)
Costume Designer: Bronte Reynolds (The House of the Dragon, Trial of Socrates, Barons)
Creative Producers: Talia Meyerowitz-Katz and Robbi James