Last night, I went to see Wicked on Broadway. It was okay.
This was a company-sponsored event. We had a few rows of seats, free hats, and deeply discounted tickets. (Actually, I think they were deeply discounted. My ticket was $28 for a pretty decent orchestra seat, but I bought it back in March, and I have no clue what the going price for a Wednesday night show in October actually is.) I knew several of the people who attended, at least enough to nod good morning to them in the hallway, but a handful — like my boss, who’s at a conference in Chicago this week — didn’t show up, and a few others were complete strangers. The two older ladies sitting next to me, for instance, who left shortly after the start of the second act, were, I think, from another office entirely.
As for the musical itself…well, it’s fun, if a little loud and unremarkable. It’s basically a revisionist history of The Wizard of Oz, painting the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba) as a misunderstood hero. It’s an intriguing idea, and treated with a lot of genuine humor. But, like Gregory Maguire’s original novel — which I read years before adapting it to Broadway was even suggested — I found a lot to like but too little to love. As a whole, I found it vaguely unsatisfying. (Maguire’s gone on to write two sequels — post-musical, it should be noted — and I haven’t had any inclination to read them.)
The musical absolutely belongs to the set design and its two leads, Elphaba and Glinda (“Gah-linda.”). Both actresses (whose names I’m afraid I don’t recall) do a terrific job with the material, but after awhile that thing the New York Times called “the ‘American Idol’ sensibility” — “larynxes stretch[ing] and vibrat[ing] with the pain of being an underdog and the joy of being really loud” — just gets old. I tuned out for a couple of numbers in the second act altogether, and I don’t think I understood much of anything the background players sang. With only one or two possible exceptions, there’s nothing I’d find myself humming afterward. (As a fan of Kristin Chenoweth’s work on Pushing Daises, I’m interested to check out the original cast album, on which she plays Glinda.)
Still, for that price, it was fun. I wish I’d bought a second ticket, since I think my mother would have enjoyed the show. And then I could have had dinner with her instead of wandering around Manhattan for three hours after work. I didn’t get home until after midnight, and I’m still pretty tired this morning, but overall I’m glad I went.
(Maguire’s gone one to write two sequels — post-musical, it should be noted — and I haven’t had any inclination to read them.)
Same here. I did think the first one was interesting, but… Well, generally speaking I love re-interpretations, especially dark and adult re-interpretations, of fairy tales and such, but it turns out The Wizard of Oz is a little too close to my own personal childhood memories for me to be entirely comfortable with a subversion of it. Plus, Maguire writes like he swallowed a thesaurus.
I have thought that it might be interesting to see the play, regardless, but I don’t exactly get out to many plays, what with being stuck here in the middle of nowhere and all.
Sounds like an interesting evening. Three hours of wandering around Manhattan would be pretty exciting to me, but I would have been too tired to sit through the show afterward! And what a great price on the ticket, too.