Wicked the Musical

As many of you already know, during my blog hiatus Kristin and I took a trip downtown to see Wicked right after Thanksgiving. At first I wasn't all that impressed. At the time I thought the hype had raised my expectation too high. But the next day, neither Kristin nor I could get the songs out of our mind. Two days after the performance we bought the soundtrack. And now I'm completely convinced: Wicked is a phenomenal musical!

Wikipedia summarizes the plot as follows:

Wicked tells the story of Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West and her relationship with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Their friendship struggles through their opposing personalities and viewpoints, rivalry over the same love-interest, their reactions to the Wizard's corrupt government, and, ultimately, Elphaba's public fall from grace. The plot is set mostly before Dorothy's arrival from Kansas, and includes several references to well-known scenes and dialogue in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Kristin and I hadn't seen a musical since before Kathryn was born when we saw Les Miserables (unless you count the Disney's Beauty and the Beast musical we saw with Kathryn -- I don't). I normally don't like musicals, and I consider Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals particularly loathsome for some reason. Stephen Schwartz composed the music and wrote the lyrics for Wicked, and I'd never really noticed him before. After we bought the soundtrack I looked him up on-line and discovered that he'd done the music and lyrics for The Prince of Egypt as well! I'll have to seek out some of his other works like Children of Eden or Godspell.

All in all, though it took a little while for me to fully appreciate much of the music, Wicked is amazing! There are too many fantastic songs, but my favorite has to be No Good Deed (about how all of Elphaba's good intentions end badly). The songs Defying Gravity, For Good, Popular, and What Is This Feeling are all close seconds. And Dancing Through Life is amazing to watch, since the cast seems to go through four or five set or costume changes during the course of that one song! If you've seen it, leave a comment and tell me what you thought of it.