'The Wizard of Oz' adds fantasy to SER's Christmas story

"Totó, I think we're not in Kansas anymore."

L. Frank Baum published in 1900

.

Since then it has become one of the most published children's books in the world.

The 1939 film version, starring Judy Garland and directed by Victor Fleming, engraved its musical numbers and the yellow brick road that Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion travel in search of the legendary Wizard of Oz to grant their wishes as they face various adventures.

The Wizard of Oz

is the story chosen by Cadena SER to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its already traditional Christmas story, which will be broadcast on December 25 at 12:00 (it will be available on SER Podcast below and on January 6 at 16.00 will be reissued in a special edition of

).

The writer Juan José Millás is in charge of adapting a novel that he considers “a masterpiece”.

“It brings together many of the things that fascinate me the most, such as paradoxical thought, that erasure that occurs between the border between wakefulness and sleep.

The fantastic and the real are intertwined in such a way that you cannot untwist it and say which thread belongs to the fantastic and which to the real.

It is one of those works that can be said to be written in a state of grace”, Millás describes in a telephone conversation.

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The main concern for the writer when adapting the text to the radio format was the orality of the medium.

“It wasn't excessively difficult because this novel has a lot of stories from the oral tradition”, he explains.

The next challenge was related to the length of the original text.

But, again, the novel itself made it easy for him: “It has an episodic structure and the episodes are not necessarily related to each other.

You can remove some or summarize them a lot without the general structure suffering.

Elena Rivera is Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' by SER.Pablo Palacios

Despite the fact that 122 years have passed since

was published , its content is still valid and still attracts the attention of children and adults with its fantasy.

Millás has an explanation for its validity: “The stories that play with the paradoxical are very popular.

Woody Allen plays a lot with the paradox and likes it a lot, for example.

And they like it because the human being is profoundly paradoxical from the moment he is born to die.

This is a novel in which all the characters are trapped in paradoxes”, says the writer.

Millás argues his theory with examples.

Dorothy believes she is lost at the very moment in her life that she is finding herself in this story of initiation into life.

The Cowardly Lion demonstrates enduring bravery by joining this group of adventurers.

The Tin Man regrets having no heart although he cries when he steps on a beetle.

And the Scarecrow craves a brain when, in reality, at the moment he thinks he is stupid, he is already demonstrating his intelligence, as Millás points out.

“There is a permanent misunderstanding that ends with the brutal misunderstanding that the Wizard of Oz is, in reality, a poor man, short and bald, who has made an entire town believe that he is an all-powerful being.

Everything is a misunderstanding in the middle of a story that confuses sleep with wakefulness.

The voices of Aitana Sánchez Gijón as the narrator, Elena Rivera as Dorothy, Ernesto Alterio as the Tin Man, Dani Rovira as the Lion, Gabino Diego as the Scarecrow and Ramón Barea as the Wizard of Oz, under the direction of Ana Alonso, give shape to the sound fiction written by Millás.

But the story would not be complete without the work of Roberto García, a filmmaker who has been in charge of the sound design of SER's Christmas stories for seven years.

To explain his function, he compares her to the illustrator who accompanies the text of a book with pictures;

he does it with sounds, music and effects.

He ensures that the tornado that transports Dorothy to the kingdom of Oz sounds in our ears, that we recognize the Scarecrow by its movement and that we remember that Totó accompanies them wherever they go.

García describes

as one of the most technically complex stories he has undertaken due to the number of different scenes and environments in which the action takes place and its fantastic component.

Although some of the sound indications were already indicated by Millás in a text that included an initial statement in which the writer asked that the result be very rich in sound, for most of the effects and sounds he had to let his imagination run wild.

And always trying to avoid the obvious: "We have to think that the listener is intelligent and try to surprise him with sounds, continually stimulate him."

Gabino Diego, during the recording of 'The Wizard of Oz'.Pablo Palacios

The preparations to start the Christmas story require months of work.

Its director remembers how the first meetings this year were held before the summer, and after the summer they already had the first versions of the script written by Millás.

Then the work begins to bring together the cast of voices, a task undertaken by producer David Tomillo.

This year, the fundamental voice is that of the narrator because of the weight she has.

Once Aitana Sánchez Gijón was secured for that function, they went for the others, taking into account that the voices had to be different enough for them to be identified without problem.

The first recording was made on November 11 and the last one a couple of weeks ago.

García sent the first “listenable” version (with all the components but open to changes) on Sunday, December 18.

At the time of this interview, this Tuesday, he had just listened to the 10th version he has made of this year's story.

"Last year, on December 23, we were still reissuing a thing."

Until the last moment they polish and pamper this gift from the SER to their listeners for Christmas.

This tradition that the station launched in 2013 with the adaptation of Charles Dickens

Carol has already brought stories such as

,

,

,

,

or

.

Roberto García remarks that it is a special occasion every year to put listeners at the center.

“Every time we find more people who see it as a tradition and listen to it on Christmas day as a family.

And it also recovers the tradition of sound fiction and radio drama, something highly valued by the actors.

It is very nice to see the respect with which Ernesto Alterio, Ramón Barea or Aitana Sánchez Gijón are shown before the bus, it is brutal ”, he concludes.

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