Wicked and wickedness.

[i_id]

Dad's a fiend for arriving early, when we go to the theater. I don't know what instilled such a horror of being late in him, but it's so strong that he grows restless an hour before he heads out to any engagement. In this instance, on Sunday, it meant leaving home at nine for a two-hour drive to a one o'clock showing. The four of us yawned and piled into his new SUV, stopped for breakfast at our traditional half-way point (The jockey-themed McDonald's between Marysville and the Tulalip Indian Reservation) and still got to Seattle by eleven. We found parking near the theater, under a mall well within Bog's convention-centric stomping grounds, and settled into the Barnes & Nobles there to pass the hour before the theater opened.

There are some horrible people in the world. Not many - I am not so much a cynic as that. But more than enough. Having wandered around the bookstore, I settled onto a stool in the sci-fi/fantasy corner to check my texts, and was browsing the shelf beside me, running my fingers across the glossy even spines when suddenly they scraped across a surprise of cold metal. Some person, maliciously, had slid razor blades, the trapezoidal, thick sort you find in heavy-duty box-cutters, between the novels so that their cutting edges were all but flush with the spines, invisible to the casual eye and waiting for someone to do just what I had done. If my fingers had been moving more quickly, or down instead of across, I'd have been sliced.

I found two, between three adjacent books, and after a quick check turned up no more, took them straight to the customer service desk. The woman there was understandably concerned, alarmed even, and gratifyingly quick to go straight to the section I showed her, starting a thorough search for more. By the time we had to leave, they let me know they'd found no more. Hopefully, there were no more to find or miss.

We were in the theater before noon, joining the throng milling about the gilt and plaster lobby. The Ozdust gift shop was doing a brisk trade in glittery t-shirts and themed perfumes ('Popular' in a bubble-shaped pink bottle and 'Wicked' in tall green glass). They had nothing I much wanted, though I vaguely regret getting nothing at all. I wish they'd had a pin for my hat. Someone said they had such a thing on their website, but no joy.

They opened the doors just before the crush got unbearable, and we found our seats, off to the left under the mezzanine. Good enough seats, for the ticket price. Dad and I wandered down to peer into the orchestra pit. Wicked travels with its own musical troop, perhaps half a dozen musicians, and they flesh it out with local talent in whichever city they're playing. Here in Seattle, they'd accrued a percussionist of the foley-artist variety, whom Dad knew distantly through a circuitous path of friends and band-mates. So we talked shop, us leaning on the ballustrade and him trapped in a pit of drums and sundry. He had an amazing collection of toys and tools for keeping beat and making all the sound effects of the musical. Some of them, a set of tiny thick Zildjin cymbals, made Dad go a bit Elphabian himself in envy. This man had gotten an 8-set in the 70's at $26 a note. Today, they closer to $200. If I ever win the lotto, I know what to get him for a birthday.


Wicked is a beautiful musical. Everyone knows the story of the Wizard of Oz, so they don't need to waste breath on place and setting and frame. And so they focus on story, and tell it in light, funny strokes. A little too light, sometimes, when compared to the rather grim tone of the Wicked novels (three now), but it's appropriate for the musical to have its own tone.

The lead singers were both substitutes, as they often are for matinees, but both perfectly good. Galinda was wonderful, going from extravagently blond, hair-tossing schoolgirl to an almost Evita-esque stateswoman trying to enforce optimism as law. Elphaba was fiercely accurate, spot-on for a girl who would have grown up being stared at and ridiculed, obsessed with her sister because caring for her was her only road to paternal approval. Her first cackle, a mad, perfect Margaret Hamilton, in response to being slapped across the face by Glinda the Good, nearly got a standing ovation of its own.

"Defying Gravity" was as beautiful as I hoped. How heady it must be to sing so powerfully that you lift off the floor, all eyes riveted on you in a storm of smoke and light and voice. And there was a beautiful note at the end of "No Good Deed" where the set's theme of blue and green gave way on the final beat to stark, blinding black and white, Elphaba's spindly, sharp silhouette straining out across the audience.

Having only heard the soundtrack before, I'd never heard all the lovely spoken bits. "We can't all go by bubble!" was spat out with such perfect viciousness. Every character took on more flesh, particularly Nessarose and Bok, their plot scarcely touched in the music itself, Nessa's rage left entirely unhinted at.

And I'd managed to forget that they changed the ending. I knew, faintly, but I forgot, and so the dramatic tension swept me up and my throat closed as Elphaba sets out the bucket for Dorothy, the Wizard's child assassin, to find, and pulls the dark curtain across to cut Glinda out of her sacrifice.

(There is a question; In this rendition, is Elphaba vulnerable to water, or did she merely encourage the fiction of a hysterical witchhunting mob?)

I always tear up during ovations. I stood for the Wizard, who was sung very wonderfully. Especially his last little solo, when he realizes that the witch he caused to be killed was the daughter he'd longed for, however shallowly. (This ending, by the way, is a wholesale fabrication for the musical, and in no way a spoiler for the books, any of them) It's a short moment, before Glinda flexes her newfound spine and orders him out of Neverland forever, but all poignancy is. The sudden realization that a victory was all loss.

Inevitably, I left needing to read the book again. So that goes on the list next, after Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (a fun read itself). Or maybe first I'll dig out all of the originals, and reread them, so I can compare-contrast the whole Oz mythos. Very tempting, though I know I'd wind up playing Ozma or someone similar. Ah well. Could be would be fun.

Comments

[skylanth.livejournal.com]

I've heard that the set is pretty darn Steampunk. Is it?

[i-id.livejournal.com]

Only in that there's a strong clock theme. So not really, no. Maybe if the gears had been moving, or the plot had had anything to do with the clocks... Or the hands on the great clock face had ever even once moved...