Wicked
Wicked The Musical
Wicked is a hugely popular musical Theatre show that first opened on Broadway on October 30th 2003. It starred some extremely talented celebrities including Idina Menzel (Rent – The movie) as Elphaba and Adam Garcia (Coyote Ugly) as Fiyero and Kristin Chenoweth as Glynda.
It tells the tale of the untold stories of the two witches Glinda the Good and The Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum’s ‘The wonderful Wizard of Oz’ and aims to show a completely different viewpoint of the Land of Oz before Dorothy arrived there from Kansas. The story explores the idea that the Elphaba (The Wicked Witch) was completely misconstrued and became the way she was due to being victimised after standing up to the Wizard’s untruthful and corrupt ways.
We witness how Glinda and Elphaba were once best friends and room mates at University and how their friendship slowly begins to buckle under the weight of various apposing viewpoints and the trials of best friends falling in love with the same boy.
Wicked is directed by Joe Mantello with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and has been nominated for ten Tony Awards including “Best Musical”. Idina Menzel won ‘Best Actress in a Musical’ for her performance as the green skinned Elphaba with the cast recording of the soundtrack winning a Grammy Award in 2005 for ‘Best Musical Show Album’, it later went platinum in 2006 due to the extreme popularity and interest in the show itself.
Wicked has become one of the highest grossing Musical shows of all time, playing to sell out audiences at every show on Broadway since it first opened.
The show become so popular it was decided that it should also run in London theatres and so the original stars of the show headed to the UK to reprise their roles on its opening night September 27th 2006. It was instantly a huge success in London, with critics and theatre goers raving about the special effects, soundtrack and fantastic performers. The role of Elphaba will be taken over by the British stage actress Kerry Ellis in January 2007 but it is thought that the show will continue to be just as successful and draw in even more crowds for the New Year.
There are plans to take the show to Japan and Germany in 2007 and it is rumoured there may even be productions appearing in Canada and Australia sometime in the near future.
The full musical soundtrack is one of the most magical and moving aspects of this show, providing just the right mix of classical sounding tracks with upbeat and perfectly fitting tunes. For those interested in the song tracks themselves the titles are as follows:
No One Mourns The Dead
Dear Old Shiz
Wizard And I
What Is This Feeling
Something Bad
Dancing Through Life
Popular
I’m Not That Girl
One Short Day
Sentimental Man
Defying Gravity
Thank Goodness
Wonderful
I’m Not That Girl
As Long As You’re Mine
No Good Deed
March Of The Witch Hunters
For Good
Finale
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Idina Menzel Gives Final Performance As Elphaba In London-Brozzles said,
January 1, 2007 @ 11:03 pm
[...] BWW reportes that Idina Menzel gave her final London Performance as Elphaba in Wicked. It was reporte dthat she was making $30,000/week. That is a crazy amount of money but then again she has drawn in over a quarter of a million people. [...]