Defying Gravity

Trying very hard to forget my stressful work day (week, month), I, along with most all of the students in Chicago Semester and Chris and Laurie, went to the Oriental Theater downtown to enjoy the "wickedly good" Wicked!

So exciting, I loved it! I tried really hard to read the book before we went but only having the 20 min train ride per day to do so I only got about 10% of that goal (its a big book!) :) Though in just that little bit I still saw some differences between written and acted story and apparently the gap gets bigger later on. Ideally this experience would have included both Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, but life is not always what we want so we got some pretty good replacement actresses. Actually the girl who played Glinda was very reminiscent of Kristin so that made me happy. The stage was very much more involved than RENT, moving parts all over and scene changes often and some pretty wicked special effects :)

Above stage at all times there was a huge dragon, moving head (with glowing red eyes) bigger than a killer whale (Janices description :) ) and a wingspan that reached the length of the stage. Galinda (who later changes her name to Glinda) does come flying in on a bubble. There is also a pretty stellar scene where Elphaba (the wicked witch of the west) flies away and as she rises up from the stage a huge black curtain is billowing behind her like the black sky she is speeding through. Obviously my descriptions are lacking so you just need to see it yourself! I would be glad to accompany you there, just let me know!