Prop: Severed hand.
Appearing in: “The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz,” The House Theatre.
In “The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz,” a dark version of L. Frank Baum’s book, the Tin Woodsman (Cliff Chamberlain) throws his ax across the stage and cuts off the hand of the Witch (Molly Brennan). Dennis Watkins, who was in charge of special effects, had to figure out how that bloody act would be carried out. “It’s impossible, of course, to do it for real on stage because we’d have to replace the actress who plays the witch every night,” he says. “I thought about having a dummy hand on stage, but I wanted something more magical than a piece of limp plastic.”
Watkins found the perfect illusion from a memory of seeing a gloved magician reach into a box and pull out a bloody severed hand–that moved around and tried to grab him. The principle was, in fact, quite simple. Brennan would wear long black gloves. When the fake ax supposedly cut off her left hand, she would, unbeknownst to the audience, pull down a cuff on the glove to hide the supposedly severed hand. The bottom edge of the cuff would be rimmed in red to look like blood. A fake gloved hand then would be attached to Brennan’s right wrist so it looked as though she was grasping a severed hand–which was, in fact, her real right hand.
During rehearsals, the crew tried to surreptitiously pass a fake hand to Brennan from behind the curtains during the scene, but it was too awkward and time consuming. So she wears the false hand before the ax-throwing scene and holds the puppet of the dog Toto to hide it. When the ax appears to hit her, Brennan turns away from the audience and falls to the floor to perform the sleight of hand with the gloves. The Tin Woodsman shouts to distract the audience until she gets up.
“I first reveal the stump to the audience, then I reveal that I am holding my severed hand–and then I move the hand,” Brennan explains. “I have to do those things one at a time so that the audience members go on a little journey.” She adds, “There is usually an audible moan from the audience when I do it.”
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“The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz,” through Nov. 5, Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western Ave., $15-$19; 773-251-2195.
