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Hold me too tight I need help believing You're with me tonight
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WICKED the musical - story of the Wicked Witch of the West
I've been listening to the soundtrack to WICKED for almost three weeks now. I absolutely love this musical - I had forgotten how beautiful being swept up in a story can be.
The central emotional core of the musical is, curiously enough for a hit anything, the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (the Good).
I need to write a better review later, but hasn't anyone else encountered this yet? I want to see it! Please, Broadway patron saints, let it have a long run so I can see it before it dissapears...
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Strider and I saw it a few weeks back. It was Strider's first Broadway show...I'd just finished reading the book and impulsively bought $55 partial-view seating. I don't recommend it, even if you're poor. We missed so much atmosphere, one interaction, and a few key entrances which all together would have made it (i'm positive) a whole lot cooler experience. And anyone's who's judging it (possibly) poorly based on the Tony performance, Idina Menzel was in oddly poor voice that evening...she doesn't usually crack on her high notes. Must've been nerves.
I think the book (have you read it, katharina?) is vastly, ridiculously superior. But the musical really goes in a very different direction than the book, in ways that i find myself actually preferring sometimes.
The musical production itself, notably the songs, is a bit trite at times. A little too Hollywoodized, or I guess since it's Broadway, Disneyified...too randomly happy, funny, silly, and especially a last minute plot twist which I found myself wanting but at the same time disdaining.
It's a bit too much spectacle, but that's too be expected -- most Broadway crowds these days are Lion Kingified and won't accept anything less than dazzling, eye-popping displays of garishly bright costumes, ginormous sets and especially...most especially...crazy special effects. If you can get past all these things, the story, at its heart, and really especially because of how they intensify the Glinda/Elphaba relationship from book to musical, is really very good.
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I have read the book. I liked many of the touching moments, and my favorite of these was the moment Galinda dressed Elphaba in her hat. The politics was even more heavy-handed in the book than in the musical, though. I don't like being able to see the author picketing through a novel because it pulls (and pulled) me out of the story too many times. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a classic in part because the politics were subtly woven through and weren't apparent on every level.
I loaned out my CD, though, and this current obsession is slowly fading. I will need a new one soon...
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Assassins is back on Broadway and Doogie Howser is playing John Wilkes Booth. I know it sounds surreal, but I heard he was amazing in Cabaret. Who knew?
Kira Junior, did you get the tickets from TKTS? I've never gotten anything worse than 7th row center from there.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I enjoyed the book, and I think the musical is definitely going on my 'to do' list. I totally missed the politics of the story, though. *hm*
Anyway, I suggest *The Dead Zone* -- the new series. It airs on USA, but I suggest trying to download or rent the first two seasons first. The first season was a mixed bag (especially the 3rd or 4th ep, which really seemed a stretch) but it got better. I have now seen the first two discs of season 2 and there wasn't a stinker in the bunch.
You know how some shows will have episodes where the characters do things that are out of character, and stuff seems really forced? *cough*Smallville-Lex-Gets-married, etc. *cough* Even those eps of TDZ where framing is a factor (Johnny gets plasma or precipitate to save his life, and keeps having visions from the donor's lives) manage not only NOT no suck, but to be fun after all.
Ron says TDZ makes him feel guilty for wasting precious hours of his life watching stuff like Smallville when there's stuff out there like THIS.
Posts: 1664 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I have to admit, I have the sound track to Wicked, and I love it. I'm taking a trip to Europe in a few weeks, and I planned a day long lay-over in New York where I have a 3rd row seat to see it on the 23rd
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Kat, I'm glad you started this thread. I bought the book tonight and can't wait to start it. I listened to the soundtrack as well. Alas, since I bought the kiddos a ton of books purchasing that will have to wait until my next trip.
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back onto the topic of Neil Patrick Harris (wasn't that what this thread was originally about?) I just loved him as Toby in the concert performance of Sweeney Todd with Patty Lupone. Wowswers, he was fantastic. He seems to have a penchant for Sondheim.
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Orson Scott Card comments on my latest musical obsession:
quote:Speaking of prequels to classics by long-dead writers, I have now listened to the CD of the original cast recording of the Broadway musical Wicked, and I have to report that it is far and away the best score for a new musical since ... since ...
Well, for a long, long time. I haven't seen the show yet, but I've read the delightful Gregory Maguire novel it's based on, and composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz nailed it.
The songs show an obvious debt to Stephen Sondheim, but that's only as it should be. (Sondheim's music and lyrics have almost all been crippled by being attached to miserably failed books, but that doesn't mean that a good composer shouldn't steal any motif from Sondheim that seems to work.)
Still, the songs are not derivative. They show an awareness of Broadway tradition, but they are absolutely original. There are fillips that made me laugh with delight -- for instance, the yodel effect in the song "Popular."
"Defying Gravity" is a potential breakout song -- it works as a thrilling anthem.
Schwartz is the composer-lyricist of several previous musicals that I don't like very much, but so what? Mitch Leigh wrote marvelous music for Man of La Mancha, and everything else he did kind of stank. (Schwartz's average is way higher than Leigh's.) And one of Schwartz's previous works was the excellent Working, based on the book by Studs Terkel, which I saw on PBS back in the early 80s and have never been able to find recorded, anywhere.
It's not just the writing that's great, though. The voices on the cast album are absolutely fantastic. And while it sounds like one of them is channeling Hermione Gingold from the original recording of Sondheim's A Little Night Music -- again, echoing Sondheim is rarely a mistake.
So after years of pretty much giving up on the new Broadway musicals, I'm headed back to New York this year to see Wicked. Meanwhile, I'll listen to the cd another dozen times in the next few weeks, I'm sure.
I'm glad he liked it. I noticed the kinship to Sondheim - the unexpected chords, the witty, lifting lyrics. I still have this CD in my car to play, and I still love it. I'd love to do a performance of Loathing and Popular - too bad I can't sing.
I don't quite see what Elphaba sees in Fiyero - won't she get bored soon? - but the real relationship is between her and Galinda. I loved this.
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You have no idea how much I want to see this musical. I was absolutely blown away by the book (ask anyone who knows me, I couldn't stop talking about it for ages afterwards).
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I saw Wicked earlier this month. Part of the reason I fell in love with NYC (I'd never been before) was Broadway...and Wicked was fabulous. Idina Menzel, I regret to announce, did not come to the stage door after, which was a pity because I had purchased and opened a CD of Wicked to give, signed, to my little sister for Christmas.
Anyway, it was incredibly wonderful. You must all see it before Idina Menzel leaves in January.
I need to get to New York. I really do. DANG IT, I should have gone to New Jersey after KamaCon and seen it then. I could have gone to the NJKamaCon, and I could have run across the whatever and seen this. How can I get to New York?
The problem is I have no money.
Hmm...I wonder if I could get work to send me there...*goes to do research*
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I'm going to get the chance to see a musical in NY during the first two weeks of December. I'll have to keep this in mind! Is it appropriate for a (just) 5-year-old? We had planned on leaving him at home, but might consider taking him to his first show if it is appropriate.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Apr 2004
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It's not inappropriate at all, but parts of it might be a little scary for a five-year-old. The flying monkeys, perhaps? But it's definitely not inappropriate, and I saw little kids there.
I don't want to see this musical. I have listened to the soundtrack, and I find it too... kitschy, for lack of a better word. Too trite, too overdone, too much of "not what I want to see onstage again." Sure, it's catchy, but that just means I've got to spend hours getting the songs out of my head. I am also firmly opposed to basic premise of the musical. Saying that Glinda and the Wicked Witch existed in a separate world from The Wizard of Oz takes something fundamental away from the movie. I can't buy it, and therefore I won't. Easy as that.
A musical I do want to see, however, is "Avenue Q." Yay for puppets having sex onstage! Well, that and an awesome soundtrack. So funny, so true.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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The official Wicked website states "recommended age for children is 8 and up" so I think we'll wait.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I hate you all! I hate you because I'm weak! I couldn't stand reading you rave about the book/music and I...I...ordered them both at Amazon.com. Now I'm broke until next month!
I haaaate you all! I must stop reading through threads about cool music/books.
(needless to say...if I don't like the book or the music, I'll start a killing spree over here) Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I've been in love with the soundtrack for weeks, now. Idina Menzel's voice in Defying Gravity is simply stunning, and call me overly sentimental but I love the lyrics of For Good. I've got to find a way to make it to NYC before January, even if it requires selling unused body parts.
My only complaint is that Fiyero seems like such a simplistic character. I should probably wait until I finally see the musical, or until my copy of the book arrives (it's being shipped, currently) before I make up my mind, but currently I'm unimpressed.
Posts: 25 | Registered: May 2004
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katharina--Definitely, definitely go to NYC and see Wicked . I spent a weekend there, and I did not spend more than $350 total, including plane tickets and train tickets and tickets to Rent and all. If you have any relatives that live near NYC, stay with them...it's not that expensive a trip if you plan well in advance. I might do it again sometime.
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Kat, Any chance of it coming to Boston or Hartford? Cuz then you could come here and a bunch of us could go together. My daughter is a Broadway musical nut.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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Wicked will be in Chicago April 29-June 12. =)
http://www.wickedthemusical.com/ (unfortunately, this site doesn't seem to have future dates beyond the NYC run...) Ticketmaster shows Wicked running at the Gershwin through June 5, though, and does not show the Chicago dates at all.
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