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July 22, 2005
wicked, take 2
took a friend to see wicked last night. it was a little different than last week, when i went with the girlfriend. it started out similarly, we had dinner at hollywood and vine, then walked over to the pantages. she bought a couple of shirts for herself and one of her daughters and we went to find our seats, which were house right instead of house left, like last week.
the show started off well enough, but 3 minutes into it, someone off stage left yelled, "stop!" to which glinda replied, "i'm sorry, did you just say stop?" when this was confirmed, she said, "alright then, we're stopping, be back in a bit." or something like that, and the cast left the stage and the curtain went down.
the house lights didn't go back on, and a buzz started in the crowd, who by now realized this wasn't part of the show. a minute later an announcement was made over the speakers, saying they had minor technical difficulties and would return asap. my theory is that the bubble thing that glinda arrives on wouldn't go back up.
a few minutes later the curtain went back up and it was back to the show.
i didn't notice when walking in earlier which of the regular cast was not performing but i guess i should have, because the woman who normally plays elphaba wasn't there last night, much to my disappointment. the woman who did play her is usually in the ensemble, i think. there are two understudies for elphaba, maria eberline and jenna leigh green. jenna leigh green played nessarose last night, so i'll assume it was maria eberline playing elphaba. in any case, her voice was nowhere near as good as stephanie j block's, and her presence wasn't as good, either. whereas i was in tears at the end of the show last week, i barely registered the ending last night. everyone still got raucous applause, however. and i suppose had i not heard ms. block do elphaba i might have liked this girl's performance better, but i don't think so. i just get the feeling that she's not very well trained, and that she's hurting herself, trying to hit and sustain notes that she really couldn't reach. i'd complain more, but let's just leave it at i wasn't very satisfied with her performance.
on the other hand, i really did enjoy glinda last night. she was very "on" and had more notes than last week. so that, at least, made me happy.
Posted by musikchyck at July 22, 2005 08:15 AM
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Comments
I'm jealous...that is the one thing i wanted to do while i was in cali. Ah well...i got to do other things for fun.
Posted by: meeta at July 22, 2005 09:32 AM
Interesting review on Wicked. I saw the production on July 23, 2005 during the matinee show and Ms. Eberline was performing then as well. I think that she did a fantastic job and her presence was outstanding. The chemistry between her and the actor playing Fiyero was outstanding as well. Perhaps it didn't live up to your expectations because the first time you saw it was more of a new experience, and the second time around provided more time to be critical. In the production that I saw, everyone was hitting their notes and they even had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction that didn't slow things down.
Posted by: John at July 24, 2005 11:52 AM