Review: "Wicked", and John Lennon's drawing ability, such as it is

[rickvs]

Saw the stage musical "Wicked" last night, and I liked it better than Rachal did. Spoilers follow.

If you're unfamiliar with it, the play explores the backstory of the relationship between Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. It also ties up in a bow (perhaps too neatly) the stories of a lot of the other main characters from "The Wizard of Oz". I understand the play differs somewhat from Gregory Maguire's novel, but since I never finished the book I couldn't tell ya how.

The actress who plays the title character, Stephanie J. Block, stole the show. She has enough of a swing-for-the-fences voice that I'm kinda surprised they put a microphone on her. (Well, sometimes they didn't, quite, but it's opening night here in Dallas and I figure they'll get the sound glitches worked out). She made the transition from nice, picked-upon Elphaba to Public Enemy Number One more believable than, say, Annakin's transformation to Darth Vader.

Kendra Kassebaum starts off playing Glinda like a hyperactive poodle with charisma to rival Reese Witherspoon, the sort of bubblehead whose chief ambition (I infer) is waiting for some Oz mechanic to invent a B-52 nose cone so that she may be painted upon it. But the character gets deeper, and the actress pulls it off.

Kudos also to David Garrison as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and to Carol Kane (yes, *that* Carol Kane) as Madame Morrible. Those two play the real villains of the piece, which is done rather interestingly.

Decent tearjerking moments, some good songs, and some good lines. And although it takes the characters pretty far afield from what one might expect of them, it all works quite well. Must look up the lyrics, so I can pick out what the chorus was actually singing -- the solo work was clear, but I've always had a problem understanding the masses at this venue. I want subtitles at the Music Hall in Fair Park!

("Steals a dead woman's shoes; musta been raised in a barn...")

In other news, I won passes to the preview of what will be a free-to-the-public exhibit of the artwork of John Lennon. (They also drew my name out of a hat and presented me with a limited edition serigraph of one of his lyric sheets. Not actually signed by Mr. Lennon, but worth enough to line Yoko Ono's pockets -- I mean, uh, wind up on eBay find a treasured place in our home).

Being a graphic artist myself, I gotta say, for an illustrator ...he sure was a great songwriter. It was nice to see his stuff, but I'm pretty sure that if he wasn't, you know, John Lennon, several of those pieces wouldn't have made it very far out of his sketchbook.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

LOL...you crack me up :)

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

And I myself. Do I know you, O Anonymous Reader?

[la-luna.livejournal.com]

Love, love, LOVED that book. . .long before it was a musical.

Glad to hear it translated so well to the stage.

Also, happy that you got a break from what has seemed like an intense few weeks for you.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

Being a graphic artist myself, I gotta say, for an illustrator ...he sure was a great songwriter

Ain't that the truth.

If you need a place for that serigraph, though, I'm sure I have storage space for it :-)

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

The radio station told me it was worth six hundred bucks ...but this may be the same sort of Monopoly-money conversion by which a different station told me the Yellow Submarine slot machine I got from them was worth eighteen hundred. If I don't give the serigraph to my sister as a wedding present, I'll probably try to find someone who's willing to throw me a couple of hundred dollars. It's a limited-edition print, after all, from a thousand-piece run. Meanwhile, I'll hang it somewhere the cats can't perform physics experiments on it, and mebbe post a couple of photos, since the scan on the radio station's web site has already been removed.