'Wicked'

Attended a preview performance of this production at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney on Wednesday 9th September.

As a whole, the production was impressive with top performances by the cast, given what they had to work with.

The stage, sets and effects were amazing. The theme of the cogs and machinery were interesting, but their significance were lost on me, lest they were a reference to the wizard's true 'wizardry' - not magic but rather the mastery of machinery to manifest so-called miracles. The use of shadow, lights and silhouettes were intriguing particularly in the opening scene.

The story itself was engaging enough - if you like a story about an unlikely friendship between rather extreme disparities of personalities, and if you happen to like the somewhat stock American high school teen drama about friendship/rivalry/relationships. The integration of characters from The Wizard Of Oz into the storyline was quite clever, although generally the adaptation to the stage lacked subplots of any major kind. Some inconsistencies of behaviour in the protagonists left us slightly puzzled.

What drives a musical though, and makes it memorable, are the songs. This was where I thought Wicked fell down. The musical score lacked variation, as did the lyric: often predictable, trite and lacked the wit that you might expect of someone of Elphaba's character say. There was no real memorable number that made you think of Wicked. The placement of some of the songs were questionable and do the audience really need to know that Glinda is happy-yet-not quite fifteen times in a 2-3 minute interval? We were also disappointed in the lack of soloist performance, with actors merely standing or walking up and down while singing. The whole song and dance is not necessarily requisite, but something more to hold our attention please.

Despite everything, it was a moderately enjoyable performance. Whether it is worth all the hype is debatable and probably comes down to personal taste.

Disclaimer: Having never actually sat through an entire screening of The Wizard Of Oz nor read the books (both L. Frank Baum's and Gregory Maguire's), some subtler aspects of the adaptation/s may have been missed.