Of all the places that the Wizard of Oz could be these days, it seems strange
that he should choose to reside in Shoreditch High Street, a half-hip,
half-hell bit of East London. And yet, I had it on rather good authority
that this is where I would find the latest incarnation of the Emerald City
and the great Oz, so I set off, sans Toto but with, quite neatly I thought,
a tote bag large enough to be a companion.
The yellow brick road has changed and not for the better. For starters, it’s
not yellow but red, not as in light district (though it’s getting there),
but as in route. Shoreditch High Street is a dark ribbon of urban life that
is one minute cool and the next minute crap. I mean, how many kebab shops do
the Munchkins need? As I tramp along, on one side of me a row of buses
fuming, on the other a strange photographic event involving women in hot
pants in an alley next to a massage parlour, I wonder what Dorothy would
think.
There is a faint ray of hope when I see a sign, its swooping letters in
orange-red neon, saying “Rainbow”. Judy lives! But then I see,
underneath it, the glowing words “Gentleman’s Bar”. Oh dear. “Tote,” I say
to my bag, “I have a feeling we aren’t in Kansas any more.” Tote doesn’t
respond, but then dogs and bags can’t talk. This may be one reason that
hardly anyone who’s anyone likes Toto (“I couldn’t stand Toto,” says
Salman Rushdie in his book on Oz).
If you know anything about Oz, you know that it’s the journey – or narrative,
as it’s called in politics these days – that counts. Thus, it is somehow
right that the door to the new Oz looks impregnable and is worryingly close
to yet another massage parlour. Inside, there is a satisfyingly dark
blood-red corridor to feel my way along, and then it’s up some stairs until
I reach another door in which stands a tall Munchkin. Well, OK, so
technically he isn’t a Munchkin, but he is wearing tartan trews and surely
that is Munchkin-esque.
“Welcome!” cries Graham Rawle. “I wasn’t expecting you until next week.” But
time is flexible when you are in a narrative and so, naturally, Graham
doesn’t mind and welcomes me into his loft, which is as fantastical as
anything in Oz. Half of it is a home to Graham and his artist wife Margaret
Huber, but the rest is something quite extraordinary: toy shop, junkyard,
studio, workshop. I can see dolls hanging from the ceiling, old-fashioned
glass store cases crammed with stuff, benches full of flotsam and jetsam.
The loft is infused with inadequate natural light but, through the gloaming,
I think I can spy the Emerald City off to one side.
“I want to start at the beginning,” I announce, setting down Tote, conscious
that this was a narrative. Graham chuckles. I chuckle back. Graham Rawle is
possibly one of the most idiosyncratic people on the planet, and I think we
both knew that this interview, spontaneous or not, would be about as
straightforward as a bowl of spaghetti. This is a man who, when he decided
to write a novel about femininity, did so by constructing his sentences with
words cut out of old women’s magazines. (It’s called Woman’s World and has
been optioned for a film.) He is 53 and, as an artist, hard to label, being
writer, collagist, photographer, dressmaker and, as the creator of the
collage series Lost Consonants, humorous etymologist. It is no
surprise to discover his latest project, illustrating the original Wizard
of Oz, took two years: if you are such a perfectionist that you have to
weave Dorothy’s basket yourself, not to mention sew her little blue socks
with your own needle-pricked fingers, it takes time.
But we have time, for we are in Oz now. The story by L. Frank Baum was a huge
hit when he wrote it in 1900. The film, 39 years later, remains the
most-seen movie in the world. “It’s extraordinary,” says Graham of this
fact, nodding like a very satisfied cat. His love affair with Oz began with
the movie and moved on to the book. I had read the book as a child and, as I
was brought up in America, had seen the movie every Christmas of my
childhood (often from behind the sofa, the flying monkeys being terrifying).
Later, I lived near Chittenango, a town in upstate New York that is Baum’s
birthplace, and where there is really, truly, a yellow brick road but not,
unlike Shoreditch High Street, an Emerald City, too. Upon this re-reading,
though, the book seemed much more political and I want to tell Graham all
about it.
But first, as this is his interview, it is back to the beginning. Why did he
choose Oz? “Because it’s the greatest story every told!” he says. But is it
really? What about Alice in Wonderland? “Alice has got some great
characters, but the story structure isn’t as appealing. For me, The Wizard
of Oz is the most perfectly structured story ever.” Peter Pan? Graham shakes
his head. “It’s a perfect example of the hero’s journey.”
For Graham, the magic of the book lies in the characters. He did 70 big
illustrations and 30 small ones and there’s not a dud among them. The
characters – Scarecrow, Tin Man, the Wizard, the Wicked Witch of the West –
were all labours of love, but it is Dorothy who really makes it all happen
for Graham. It is not too strong a statement to say that when he talks about
Dorothy – his Dorothy – he goes all gooey. “I knew if you don’t love Dorothy
you are going to hate the book. Unless you fell in love with Dorothy in the
same way that, you know, like the special relationship that I have with
Dorothy, it wasn’t going to work.”
Graham began by holding what amounted to Dorothy auditions. He bought old
dolls, odd dolls, switched their heads around, searching for the perfect D.
In the end – which is perfect because this is the core message of Oz – he
had the right Dorothy all the time. Her name was Gloria, a small doll from
the late Fifties, porcelain complexion, blonde wispy hair, fringed blue
eyes, whom he had used in another project. “She is very photogenic. She has
this fantastic face. You can turn her one way and she looks completely
different and then turn her a fraction the other way…” He drifts off.
We go over to one of his work tables where, rather bizarrely perhaps, he has
been photographing Dorothy along with the other dolls he “auditioned”. This
is for an animated film to promote the book. He explains that, having found
the face, he then beheaded her (or be-bodied her, more accurately), for
Gloria had a few curves and he needed the body of a boy. But then he had to
fatten up her calves to make it right. (Can you see that this is becoming a
bit obsessive?) He made all her costumes, including her fabulous silver
shoes. Yes, silver! Not ruby. It seems that MGM changed the colour of the
shoes as, in Technicolor, red stood out more. Silver would have merely
reflected the yellow in the yellow brick road.
“Yes! Result!” I think as Graham takes me over to the Emerald City, a place
like no other not least because it sits atop a large board, radiating total
greenness in an almost nuclear fashion, a fantastical collection of
miscellany that is a cross between the set of an old-fashioned sci-fi film
and an art project gone mad. Graham points to a round object with undulating
rings that looks like something out of The Jetsons, a space-age TV
cartoon from my youth. “That is the thing for unblocking the toilet,” he
announces. “It’s slightly concertinaed. You can poke it round the U-bend.”
Or paint it green and put it in Oz. He points to various buildings. “That
was a Pringles can, those are salt and pepper pots, that’s a Bird’s Custard
tin…” I keep murmuring: “But this is WONDERFUL.” There are rubber ducks,
tiny intricately beaded flowers, an oversized hand, starbursts, walkways,
teensy people with weensy hats (no massage parlours, thank God). All
twinkled, a viridian galaxy in which no detail had been overlooked.
