Lunch of Champions

Wicked

I had the chance to catch a great show a week ago, though it was a bit different from the standard Lunch of Champions fare. I saw the musical, “Wicked”, at the Orpheum and it was excellent. This show got no love from theatrical critics, but the viewing audience loves it. The show was only in the Twin Cities for about a week, and tix sold out in 20 minutes. Now, I’m certainly not a high brow character (in fact, I’m black-listed at almost every event in the cities for cultured individuals), but I enjoyed the book and heard great things about the show. So I forked over the ridiculus fee for scalping site tickets and headed downtown.

The concept for “Wicked” was essentially to fill in the backstory to an existing tale, but from a totally different point of view. This show tells the backstory for “The Wizard of Oz” from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. Pretty interesting concept, and thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Since everyone has seen “Oz” about a million times (and at least once on mute with Pink Floyd providing the dialogue), the stage is already set. This show dispells everything you ever imagined about the Wicked Witch and makes her the hero of the story.

The story details her formative college years when she befriended Glinda (later to become the Good witch of the North) and became jaded with the ruling Wizard. It explores the sometimes rocky relationship with her sister who goes on to become the Wicked Witch of the East, and whose magic ruby slippers were made so famous by that chick from Kansas. (I never did figure out was whether or not there was a Witch of the South, either good or wicked.)

In the end she finds a guy, falls in love, fakes her death, and cruises off into the sunset. Really just your classic “girl is born with green skin and magic powers, meets boy, falls in love, fakes her own death by melting, and lives happily ever after” kind of story.

One of the best things about this show was how much the crowd really got into it. I’ve seen quite a few shows at the Orpheum, but this was more like a concert crowd. After each number there was not only clapping, but whistling, football-style “wuuuuuuuuuu”s, and a ton of energy. The show was different from the book and was well adapted to keep the crowd having fun. The book takes a somewhat political bent for much of the story, but the stage adaptation keeps things lighter. There were lots of jokes thrown in that poked fun at everything from the original “Oz” to sorority-type blondes (Glinda is the other main character).

Excellent show overall, and one I’d definitely recommend. It’s showing in tons of cities around the US, with long runs in NYC, Boston and Chicago among others. You can check out show details at www.wickedtickets.com.