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It's so nice to see "The Wiz" on a New York stage again, courtesy City Center Encores! But like the Wizard of Oz himself, this revival of the long-running 1975 musical is not all that it's cracked up to be.

The Summer Stars Production is a mixed bag of celebrity and musical treats that alternately delight and disappoint.

Performer Ashanti, plays Dorothy with a woodenness only the Tinman could love. Making her theatrical stage debut, she brings little presence to the role and less acting ability. Of course, her singing is the draw here and she does recall Stephanie Mills lovely voice from the original; but this pop star has yet to distinguish between recording a song and selling it to a live audience.

Orlando Jones wizard also lacks magic.

Fortunately, the showier roles went to bonafide veterans and for the most part they are dazzling. LaChanze as both Auntie Em and Glinda is a knockout. Her witch sistahs, Dawnn Lewis as Addaperle and Tichina Arnold as the wicked Evillene, are nasty good. And Dorothy's travel companions, James Monroe Iglehart's lion and Joshua Henry's Tinman are especially commanding.

"The Wiz" was never considered a great musical, but it was a triumph in many ways. This modernized black version of the L. Frank Baum classic has great fun sending up the cherished story from our youth. And the divine score by Charlie Smalls gets a giant assist from a superb onstage orchestra. It was also a stylistic sensation with Geoffrey Holder's glorious Tony Award-winning direction and costumes.

By contrast, the revival has a ways to go. Encores' notoriously short rehearsal period is problematic for a show of this magnitude. At the helm, Thomas Kail of "In The Heights" fame has some interesting directorial concepts, but the execution doesn't always work.

Andy Blankenbuehler's inventively original choreography threatens to steal the show at its best moments and bogs it down at its worst.

"The Wiz" isn't exactly "easing" on down the road. It's laboring to get there. But with some key cast changes and more time to polish its act, it may find a home on Broadway yet again.