Wicked @ The Orpheum

[howeird]

Like many folks my age, my first contact with the land of Oz was in the Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke movie. I had never read the L. Frank Baum books as a child, but read most of them 10 or so years ago. My first exposure to Wicked was waking up one morning to my TV set showing one of my favorite musicals actresses of all time, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel on a bed in the middle of a street in NYC performing the song Popular for a morning show. I was impressed. Both women sang beautifully and showed great comic timing, and the song became a major earworm. I bought the OBC CD, and was taken with how powerful the solos and duets are, the ensemble pieces not so much.

Someone suggested I read the book. I did. It sucked. Happily, the musical shreds the book, balls up the confetti, throws it into a blender, and squeezes the results out the other end of the Broadway Tony Award-Winning Musicals grinder and a hit is born.

Last night I went to see the touring company in SF, and in a nutshell:
Wins:
- All the leading parts I saw are well-cast, including the understudies
- Set design is mostly awesome, and special effects close to flawless
- Costume workmanship looked super
- Makeup was so well done I only now remembered to say something about it
- Killer seats - 7 rows from the stage, left aisle of the center section
- The woman playing Elphaba (the green witch) is named Teal. Yes, really.

Loses:
- Horrible audio mixing, the orchestra drowned out almost everyone
-  Some flubbed lines
- Costume design was way over the top, and most of them looked uncomfortable
- The mechanical dragon atop the proscenium was a massive waste of time & energy. Totally pointless, and ugly too.

Kendra Kassebaum plays Glinda, and she does Spoiled beautifully. Great voice, lovely cheerleader's face, and my only complaint is she added some flounces which looked too much like the early stages of atropine poisoning.  Teal Wicks as Elphaba (aka The Wicked Witch of the West) covered the full range of emotions from shy and self-effacing to PETA-level animal rights crusader flying wonder woman, and while her voice is powerful and clear, I think the score may have been tweaked a bit to cover a lack of higher register range. Just guessing, I could be wrong. Nicolas Dromard is the claasical handsome prince Fiyero, and he is the whole package of singer, dancer, actor and DDG heart throb. Since it was a mid-week show, Patty Duke was replaced as Madame Morrible by BET favorite Celisse Henderson, who was very solid in the role. Nessarose also was played by a capable stand-in, Natalie Daradich. Lee Wilkoff as the wizard inspired me in a different way - I know I can play that part better than he did, except for one high note. There was one casting WTF: Boq the Munchkin is played woodenly by a too-tall Eddy Rioseco.

Edit insert:
The songs, how could I leave them out? Popular was delightful, but just a tiny bit less so than the original. I got the feeling Glinda was being rushed through her magic wand and beautification routine. The first punchline of What Is This Feeling (loathing) was ruined by the orchestra drowning out the key word, but Glinda and Elphaba managed to pull it out by the end of the piece. As Long As You're Mine was musically one of the best pieces, but the director went bare stage, fully clothed for what is Elphaba's devirginification, and just sucked all the sexiness out. Defying Gravity was not as uplifting as I'd expected, but I cried real tears over For Good, it was so beautifully done, minimal orchestra presence, and being able to see for the first time whose lines were whose (Glinda and Elphaba have similar voices on the CD). It was "Like a handprint on my heart" which did it. I Am Not That Girl was also a tear-jerker, but definitely topped for sniffles by the reprise. So much pathos in so few words. Stephen Schwartz has written beautiful and powerful words to match his melodies.

There was a lot of dancing, but the choreography was hard to follow. There is lots of flailing and spinning. There are some acrobatics, but they had the feeling of "hey, I can do a back flip" "oh? well,we'll try to work a couple in".

Costumes. Pardon my bipolarism, but they looked high-budget gorgeous, and I did not like most of them. The Emerald City denizens looked like they were at a costume party in The Jetsons, everyone is in wigs and hats, and they all looked so uncomfortable. The Shiz student uniforms were not uniform. OTOH, the guard costumes were very close to the movie's, and looked excellent, as did Elphaba's second act black dress. Glinda's costumes were all great, except the pink party dress was an awkward length.

Sets screamed "steampunk" and were inspired by the book's clockwork theme, which in a way is unfortunate because that was one point which the book did incredibly poorly when it comes to being true to Baum's original. But beautiful work on the sets, and the flying in and out vertically and horizontally made me want to be a stage techie again. Lighting ran the gamut of piss poor all the way to "wow". They had a rotating special which simulated rainfall which was super. Stage fog and tightly beamed spots made one of Elphaba's faux flying scenes a "wow" moment. There was no real flying in this show, which disappointed me, especially since the way they covered it was usually pretty lame.

All in all worth seeing if you have enough AMEX points to cover the $94 price+tax+fees. It's a good theater, balcony seats might be fine too if they are not too far off to the side.

Wicked runs at the Orpheum through October 11.

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Curious as to whether you've seen The Wiz. As a longtime Baum fan, I was hesitant to watch it at all. I did see the film back in the 80s sometime, and was surprised to find it tolerable and even good in spots - but not something I've ever wanted to see again.

What I would like to see is a live-action musical of the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. I would especially like to see what they might do with H.M. Woggle Bug, T.E. and how they'd do the pumpkin-head character who has to change heads when his pumpkin turns rotten.

I remember noticing as a child that the original Oz movie skipped a lot of

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

(accidentally hit enter and continuing) stuff, like the characters made out of china who had to glue themselves back together when they fell down.

[howeird]

The Wiz
I thought about mentioning that. No, I have not seen it, and will continue to avoid it for a plethora of reasons, but mainly because I don't like music which contains a lot of screaming. Also, the way the original play is written, any cast member can be any color, except the WWW who must be green, so I look at the Walkin' On Down The Road edition as a highly racist exploitation.

Many of the Oz books would make good musicals, and yeah, I would like to see Woggle Bug brought to life. The changing heads effect is really very easy, just make the costume so the actor's head fits in the neck, with a simple turn-latch docking ring on top. I've seen theme park mascots done that way.

The movie skipped lots of things to make a simple plot with a happy ending. So did Wicked. The difference is Wicked the book is long, aimed at adults, and not a page-turner, and needed to be mostly tossed aside to salvage what could be made into a play.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

The Wiz isn't as bad as you think, but you're not missing anything great. Its greatest achievement (other than the hit song Ease On Down the Road, a very annoying bit of music) is making a bad concept almost tolerable.

Another pleasure I've set aside for later - almost 30 years now - is reading A Barnstormer In Oz by Phil Farmer. One of my favorite writers, but I still can't get my mind around him writing an Oz book, even though I think he wrote Burroughs way better than Burroughs ever did - and was even readable writing in the style of Finnegan;s Wake.