I just checked, and while I mention our obsession with Wicked in 2 (or 3) postings, I have never blogged about Wicked directly. I was surprised, but it made sense when I thought about it for a second. I started this blog right after our last viewing of Wicked. Last? Yes, for the few of you out there who are woefully uninformed, Lois and I have seen Wicked 4 times already, all between July 5th, 2006 and December 29th, 2006.
It is far and away our favorite show of all time on Broadway, and between us, we have some shows that we’ve seriously loved, going back to Richard Kiley in Man of La Mancha, the original Fiddler on the Roof, etc. We’ve also loved some recent shows (including Brian Stokes Mitchell in Man of La Mancha, he was simply amazing!).
Of the fours times we’ve seen it, one had an understudy for Elphaba that was awful. Even so, not only wasn’t the show ruined for us, I still loved it! I have to say that I felt bad for the rest of the audience who was seeing it for the first time and thought that this is how it was supposed to be performed! 
Unfortunately, on that day we happened to take two very good friends with us, who happened to be filling in for two other good friends of ours who had to cancel at the last minute, and they really didn’t enjoy it as much as we expected they would. Perhaps if the lead Elphaba had been there, it would have made a difference…
You might wonder whether we had any desire to see it again? The definitive answer is yes. We haven’t gone (or even tried to go), because the two leads both changed on January 9th, 2007 (10 days after the last time we went), and the few YouTube videos of each of them doing their Wicked roles elsewhere were awful. I was wildly disappointed, because the thought of seeing fresh faces doing the leads was a positive thing for me.
I often think about how to find out whether they have settled in to the roles or not, and we are both itching to see it again. Today, out of the clear blue, I did a Google search for “wicked broadway review julia”. I found a review by someone in NJ who saw it this week. She (my assumption as to the gender) was wildly disappointed. That said, the review was the exact opposite of what I expected. She hated the story line (thought it was boring), hated the sets (thought they were boring), but (and this the point!), she got the chills when the two witches sang together.
All I was curious about is whether these ladies can sing. Of course, trusting someone who completely missed the beauty and depth of the storyline, and didn’t understand the simplicity and power of the set design, didn’t leave me in a very trusting mood…
So, off I went in search of more reviews. I found a NY Times site with 756 reviews of Wicked by users (not critics). A maximum of 5 stars, plus commentary. The average rating was 4.25 out of 5. So far, so good, but, how fresh were these reviews? Luckily, they are sorted in reverse chronological order, and the top 4 all had seen the two women I was interested in learning about. All 4 of them gave 5 stars, and all four wrote glowing reviews (which, aside from not knowing these particular leads, I completely agree with, every single word).
So, it would seem that either the YouTube videos were misleading, or they’ve gotten better now that they’ve been on Broadway for a long time, or, like the one night we had the awful understudy, the show overcomes inferior performances all on its own!
We’re up at the house for a slightly longer stretch than usual (what a blessing!). We have to be in the city Wednesday night and Thursday night this coming week. Lois asked me to check whether there were tickets available for either night. I laughed for two reasons:
- The show is typically sold out months in advance
- We have tickets to see Kenny Chesney on Thursday night, and I have dinner plans with a former colleague on Wednesday night
So, on a lark, I just searched for the next available dates. Amazingly, there were two tickets available in the orchestra for this Sunday’s matinée! I asked her if she wanted to “go for it”, and she was extremely enthusiastic about doing it! We never (and I need to emphasize, in case the bold lettering didn’t make the point, never) go into the city from the house for an activity by ourselves, and return to the house the same day. Yet, we’re about to do just that!
Now, for the pièce de résistance, the seating. We got tickets in row EE, center orchestra. I told Lois that was possibly the last row, and she said she was fine with that. However, after paying for the seats, I discovered that it is the fifth row. We have never had seats this good in our previous times there, so we are quintuply excited (get it?). 
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll be sure to write up something small (or long) when we finally get to see it for our fifth time.