Wicked

This is also a show I wanted to see for a looong time. I saw Kerry Ellis (Elphaba) in Les Mis and thought she was a wonderful Fantine. Now I got the chance seeing her as Elphaba and she didn’t disappoint me – on the contrary.

We’ve been listening to the CD for the last few months and loved Idina Menzel’s voice. However, I’ve heard her sing live – on various TV performances – and the high notes in “Defying Gravity” weren’t always spot on. Kerry Ellis sang each and every note exactly as it should, sometimes fragile (I’m not that girl and For Good), sometimes powerful (Defying Gravity and No Good Deed). At every scene she chose the right mood and sang her heart out.

When you’ve not seen a show and only know the music, you make pictures in your head, well.. that’s what I do 🙂 My pictures were too bland and unexciting compared to the real thing. Gorgeous costumes, so rich in material and color – including an enormous variety of shades of green! A great company, from hearing the individual voices I bet there’s more future “lead” material there! Great set, which is used to the max and not just there for decoration, a show with an unexpected ending. A great love story, but also a tale about friendship for life and the message that you should never judge a book by its cover.

Manon’s favourite song is “Popular” and we cried tears of laughter. Dianne Pilkington exaggerates Glinda’s shallowness in a funny way, and though you feel that she truly wants to help Elphaba, she’s too obsessed with her own beautiful image to see what really is going on. For those who’ve seen the show, Diana flicks her hair with a “toss, toss” which made the audience rofl! Hard to explain, it’s a case of “you had to be there…”. I found a video of the two of them at YouTube, watch for the “toss, toss” around 3.28 min. 🙂

Oliver Tompsett makes the female part of the audience melt (and probably some of the males too). He’s tall, handsome and has a great voice. I’m not sure I like his character though. Fiyero is very convinced of his wonderfulness – in a way he and Glinda are the perfect pair. But as time goes on he shows more stamina and backbone and does some good things (can’t go into detail) so in the end it all turns out well.

Of course we went to the stagedoor afterwards, not sure what to expect after the scrum at Joseph the day before. But it was a pleasant surprise. About 20 people were waiting patiently in line and when the cast came out they took time to talk to everyone, signed programmes and posed for pictures. It was wonderful meeting them. Manon – who usually hates having her picture taken on demand – was proud to be standing so close to the people she saw on stage that night. Her English isn’t that well yet, but I explained the story beforehand and she knows the lyrics by heart, so she had a wonderful time. Talking to the cast was a totally different matter though, but everyone said it wasn’t a problem, they’d talk to “mom” and she would translate 🙂 Wonderful, wonderful people! No starlike airs, but down to earth and well aware of the things a good PR can do for them.

I’ll leave you with the most decent video I could find at YouTube (tiny cameras in the audience almost never give a good result) of Defying Gravity by Kerry & Dianne.