Jul. 27, 2011 - Issue #823: The Naked Truth
Revue
Wicked
Broomstick musical theatre
A dazzling limelight Emerald City, the giant mechanical dragon that crowns the stage and stares out at us, occasionally, with glowing crimson eyes, the exquisite costuming and lighting/set design all amp up the splendour of this story of our wicked-witch-to-be, presently now just called Elphaba (Anne Brummel). Born with a green-tinge to her skin, and ostracized for it from just about then on, she's despised by her father but sent to school to take care of her wheelchair-bound sister. There she finds herself known as a magical prodigy, sharing a dorm room with the popular, vapid Galinda (Natalie Daradich) who uses words like "thrillified," and, eventually, entangled in a web of sometimes politicial, sometimes romantic intrigue.
The central pair of witches-to-be anchor all of this spectacle in something tangible: Elphaba has a whip-crack wryness that plays well through Brummel (and whose power-belting vocal chops are unrivaled in the cast), and Daradich plays Galinda's hair-flicking vacuousness with perfect comic chops: her song about popularity is delivered with an over-giddy gusto that's a riot to watch, only paralleled here by "Defying Gravity," a staunchly magical call to arms that sends some chills down the ol' vertebrae.
It's hard to imagine a better take on the source material—although, while Wicked certainly wraps you up in spectacle as it takes to the skies, it essentially abandons the MacGuffin it flew in on: a strange, fascist anti-talking-animal sentiment that starts Elphaba down her quest. We find out the source, of course, but the real why and its implications are left unanswered without much in the way of acknowledgment. For a play that first grabs you with a fairly political scenario, it seems to get cast off pretty quickly for a love story and a couple of songs.
Honestly, most probably won't miss it; escape is, after all, part of the reason we go to theatre, and Wicked will give you that in a dazzling flight of colour and song. But pathos is another reason, and Wicked largely leaves "why" behind in an eagerness to please, which, to its credit, it mostly succeeds in doing.
Until Sun, Aug 7
Jubilee Auditorium, $103.60 – $149.60 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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