Alan Mingo, Jr. knew “The Wiz.”

He knew the Broadway show that reinvented “The Wizard of Oz” with Black characters. He knew the iconic 1978 movie adaptation from repeated viewings as a kid. But Mingo, Jr. didn’t know director Schele Williams and writer Amber Ruffin’s vision of the 2024 Broadway revival.

“I read the new script and I had the first nervous breakdown of my career,” Mingo, Jr. told the Herald with a laugh. “This wasn’t anything I was familiar with.”

Mingo, Jr. had been cast as the great and powerful Wiz — a role he knew from Richard Pryor’s performance in the film and through working on productions as a college student and professional. He went to talk to Williams and the director explained to him that she didn’t want this Wiz to have any redeeming qualities.

“As an actor, I’m going, ‘Why?,’” he said. “She told me, ‘I need teenage girls to understand, as (Dorothy) gains her tribe, sometimes adults will just outright lie to them and never try to fix things for them.’ ”

“In the original ‘Wiz,’ once the heroes come back to the wizard, he finds inspirational things to make them feel better about themselves,” he added. “But (Williams) didn’t want that version. She wanted people to do what they tend to do in real life: Adults disappoint you sometimes and you still have to move on. And I said, ‘Wow.’ There is no way to debate that.”

While it keeps the memorable music from the movie and show, Williams’ take makes Dorothy and her new friends younger, turning it into a true coming-of-age story, something she wanted her daughters to recognize. It understands Dorothy in new ways — most of the creative team are women. What also remains is the show’s Technicolor joy and Afrofuturistic vision (Academy Award-winning “Black Panther” production designer Hannah Beachler created the scenery).

Mingo, Jr. eventually fell in love with the new version and set about inventing a wizard unlike any other for this production, which plays Aug. 12 to 24 at the Citizens Opera House, right in time to celebrate the original show’s 50th anniversary.

“Mine is a Samuel L. Jackson playing Willy Wonka situation,” Mingo, Jr. said with a chuckle. “He’s almost like a used car salesman, but the audience goes along for the ride. So he had to have some idiosyncrasies, had to have some quirks that made you go, ‘Oh, I like him… Oh, wait, he’s awful.’”

Mingo, Jr. has been surprised how willingly audiences have gone along for the ride.

As a fan of the film from a very young age and an actor who has worked on two previous attempts to bring the show back to Broadway that fell apart, Mingo, Jr. understands that there are audience members who are purists — he was a purist too before getting behind this version. But he’s seen the show’s magic convert skeptics effortlessly.

“Last week, I was talking to an older DJ at a Black radio station who saw the original show, and I told her, ‘You know, most of the show was rewritten,’” he confessed. “She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘When did you realize this?’ She said, ‘Right now, when you told me.’”

For tickets and details, visit boston.broadway.com