Making Wicked Broadway-ready 2003

While I was volunteering at the America Festival again this year, I got to catch up with all those friends who do the same. "How was your year?" we say at the beginning and "See you next year!" at the end.

In this case. however, opportunity may arise to get together sooner, since Gary and Cody are big musicals buffs and will be coming up to San Francisco to see Urinetown and a couple other shows soon.

We, of course, talked about the new musical, Wicked. Though we agreed that the costumes, set design and performances were great and that the book (the story & dialogue) was some of the best in years, they were very disappointed in the show overall. They thought the music was just awful with a few exceptions ("Popular", "Wonderful", "The Wizard and I", "What Is This Feeling?[Loathing]") and predicted that if that shortcoming isn't fixed before it opens on Broadway, it will be savaged by the New York critics, who are, as Gary said, cruel.

I wasn't as bothered by the music as they were, but then I'm easily pleased and willing to let a bad song be over-shadowed by everything else I'm enjoying. Still, "Which Way's The Party" is a real dog of a song and Glinda & Elphaba's duet at the end ("For Good") fails to really show off those two fantastic performers, plus it has bizarre lyrics ("a seed dropped by a seabird"? What the fuck?).

After thinking about it a while, I think the best course of action would be to hand the show over to Tony-winner William Finn who wrote Falsettos and let him wash some of that dated, trite feel out of the music. If it sounded a little less 70s and there were some songs with the emotional force of "What More Can I Say" and "You Gotta Die Sometime" in there, it would be unstoppable.

[April 25, 2004: This post gets so many hits from people searching for more information about the show who fail to notice that it was written based on a pre-Broadway version of the show. Before you leap to the show's defense, remember that I didn't see the same show you did. They apparently made a lot of good changes, as the Broadway soundtrack illustrates.]

Comments

Making Wicked Broadway-ready

While I was volunteering at the America Festival again this year, I got to catch up with all those friends who do the same. "How was your year?" we say at the beginning and "See you next year!" at the end.

In this case. however, opportunity may arise to get together sooner, since Gary and Cody are big musicals buffs and will be coming up to San Francisco to see Urinetown and a couple other shows soon.

We, of course, talked about the new musical, Wicked. Though we agreed that the costumes, set design and performances were great and that the book (the story & dialogue) was some of the best in years, they were very disappointed in the show overall. They thought the music was just awful with a few exceptions ("Popular", "Wonderful", "The Wizard and I", "What Is This Feeling?[Loathing]") and predicted that if that shortcoming isn't fixed before it opens on Broadway, it will be savaged by the New York critics, who are, as Gary said, cruel.

I wasn't as bothered by the music as they were, but then I'm easily pleased and willing to let a bad song be over-shadowed by everything else I'm enjoying. Still, "Which Way's The Party" is a real dog of a song and Glinda & Elphaba's duet at the end ("For Good") fails to really show off those two fantastic performers, plus it has bizarre lyrics ("a seed dropped by a seabird"? What the fuck?).

After thinking about it a while, I think the best course of action would be to hand the show over to Tony-winner William Finn who wrote Falsettos and let him wash some of that dated, trite feel out of the music. If it sounded a little less 70s and there were some songs with the emotional force of "What More Can I Say" and "You Gotta Die Sometime" in there, it would be unstoppable.

[April 25, 2004: This post gets so many hits from people searching for more information about the show who fail to notice that it was written based on a pre-Broadway version of the show. Before you leap to the show's defense, remember that I didn't see the same show you did. They apparently made a lot of good changes, as the Broadway soundtrack illustrates.]

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