Has anyone seen the Wicked tour with Shoshana and Megan?

Has anyone seen the two of them in the Wicked tour yet? How were they? Did they do anything differently? Any reviews...

Updated On: 9/7/06 at 05:00 PM

I see it one month today.....
I'm so excited!

She was never going too. I think it was Laura Bell Bundy.

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Where did all the Shoshana fans go? I thought for sure there'd be alot of posts about her joining the tour. I'm anxious to hear how it's going out there.

Oct 6 in Toronto.

I saw the show at a matinee last Thursday. I was incredibly excited to see the show - I'm not a big Wicked fan, but when I was in NYC last Thanksgiving I decided to go see it because Megan Hilty was a student with my voice teacher and I've only heard fantastic things about her. When we arrived at the Gershwin Theater last November, I was SO upset to find that Megan was out sick! When I found out she would be with the tour in Seattle, I jumped on the chance to get tickets.

Last Thursday, luckily, both Shoshana and Megan were in. As I said, I've never been a Wicked fan, but seeing the show on Broadway only made it worse. The ensemble was worse, and no one in the cast was very good when I saw it. Shoshana was alright, the Glinda standby (Stacy Morgain-Lewis) was almost as bad as David Ayers, and Ben Vereen phoned in big time. I didn't have very high expectations for the tour last Thursday.

Boy was I wrong.

Let me just say, regardless of having this weird connection to Megan and thus being slightly biased going into the show, she is BY FAR the best part of the show, hands down. She was absolutely brilliant; she is a superb actress and her voice is gorgeous - her soprano is amazing but I was blown away when she belted the crap out of parts of Thank Goodness.

I definitely enjoyed Shoshana's performance more this time. She was obviously very tired vocally, but I still found her voice too pop-y and I felt she riffed far too much - riffing can add great emotion, but I felt she way overused the riffs and thus they detracted from her performance. She did have a wicked (pun not intended) mix though, and when she wasn't riffing, I enjoyed her more belty range. Her acting was pretty good though - she seemed more "on" last Thursday than in New York.

As far as the rest of the cast, I was blown away by Alma Cuervo as Morrible and Jennifer Waldman as Nessarose. Both took very underwritten roles and made them memorible - Cuervo with her spot-on comic timing and Waldman with a fine set of pipes. The rest of the supporting cast was great - Sebastian Arcelus (Fiyero) took by far the worstly written and most underwritten character and made it memorable, and I really enjoyed Christopher Russo, who was on as the Wizard (PJ Benjamin is the regular).

Overall, I found the tour to be in a much better state than the Broadway production. The ensemble was, by far, a stronger vocal cast than the New York one, and the entire cast brings great energy to the piece, which is exactly what it needs.

Christopher Russo played the Wizard?? Wow this may have been the first time an understudy went on. David Garrison never missed a performance and as far as I know P.J. Benjamin had not missed either, so congrats to all three of them!

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