Just Wick It

Well, quite. I do understand that there is a time and a place for horrible puns, and that the time and place might not be anywhere on the Monday morning, but hey, it’s been made, so we are all going to live with it, ok?

This weekend Boyfriend and I have FINALLY gone to London to see Wicked, the musical about the live of the Wicked Witch of the West, before she became such. Well, we’ve been to London before, but never to see this show in particular, and I am happy that we did.

The show, based on the book of the same name, tells of the green-skinned Elphaba, destined to be the enemy of all of the Land of Oz, of Wizard of OZ fame. And it does this well. Events from the well known WoO are seen from a completely different perspective, showing what has always been believed as true and right to maybe not be so very true and decidedly bendy.

There isn’t much I can tell about the show or the book without giving a lot away, so I choose in stead to harp a little bit about the things I didn’t really like. (Some change of the regular norm that will be ey?)

For one, the two main actresses, one of which (pun intended) had a very impressive voice, seemed to never really get into their role. This might seem a bit unfair to say, after all, the original cast of the show was known for their, and had excellently matched voices, and it is hard to take over a role in any way, but these two, though they certainly didn’t just phone it in, seemed to be faxing with a little bit of listlessness.
As an example, there is a famous anecdote about the original Glinda launching herself onto a set piece so violently she bounce doff on the other end, to much joy of the audience. This will never happen here, because, well, the cast seemed to just not care all that much.
That said; we might’ve just caught them at a bad night, as the show is certainly set up well, and they didn’t look the type to bring of lackadaisical performances as a rule.

I did enjoy the show quite a bit, I like the alternative to settled history it provides, I can remember WoO (although Boyfriend couldn’t) and I can enjoy anything with at lest a few snappy tunes. But I did not enjoy it as much as the two ladies sitting behind us. I can almost safely say that nobody enjoyed it as much as the two ladies sitting behind us. They were holding hands all through the first act, excited and happy to be there (handholding can be a sign of rampant lesbianism or musical enthusiasm, the theatre arts defy gaydar) and they laughed loudly at anything that happened.
And when I say loudly, I mean that when I took the plane back to Holland a day later we had some turbulence from the sound waves of their laughter having been bounced of the Alps and coming back towards England.
That, and they were, quite clearly, stupid. Granted, everybody gets a little stupid when watching a musical, it is the distraction of glitter that does that, but these two were really really stupid. Boyfriend at one point during one of the heavily foreshadowing opening songs nudged me and pointed out the obvious foreshadowing. I did the same thing just after the intermission. The two behind us pointed out EVERYTHING. “Yes, because she is EVIL!!!” “It’s so obvious she is GOOD!!” “There is a tree right THERE!!!!” Everything was a surprise to them, and EVERYTHING was exciting.

And then, just before they moved up in the intermission to cleverly apprehend some empty seats a couple of rows in front, one of them turned to the other and said the one line I will be repeating until the day I die: “I am so excited, my heart is literally beating IN MY CHEST!!!”

Yes, well, quite. So is mine. So is, in fact, the heart of almost everybody I know.

All joking and harping aside, the show is very entertaining, the music is in places absolutely beautiful, and it casts a very well thought through new light on childhood memories. I would advise anyone to go and see this, or at least get the soundtrack.

Stripes at “heart is in chest, all systems normal”

Grtz,
Kevin