#1
Posted: 8/3/10 at 6:24am
From The Stage
How do you explain the phenomenon of Wicked?
When it premiered in New York in October 2003, after an earlier try-out in San Francisco, Ben Brantley in the New York Times was dismissive, labelling it a 'Technicolorized sermon of a musical' and calling it an 'equally arch and earnest show'.
He reserved his praise only for star Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda, saying she “must put across jokes and sight gags that could make angels fall. Never for a second, though, does she threaten to crash to earth. Even lying down, Ms. Chenoweth, who performed similar magic in 'You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown' four years ago (and won a Tony), remains airborne, proving that in the perilous skies of Broadway, nothing can top undiluted star power as aviation fuel. Be grateful, very grateful, that Ms. Chenoweth, who spent a brief exile in the land of sitcoms, has returned to the stage with none of the routinized glibness associated with weekly television. She provides the essential helium in a bloated production that might otherwise spend close to three hours flapping its oversized wings without taking off.”
But take off this show most certainly did, even though it was beaten to that season’s Tony Award for Best Musical by 'Avenue Q'.
It also lost in most of its other major categories, too (only Idina Menzel, playing Elphaba, won a performance Tony for Best Actress, eclipsing the praise heaped on Chenoweth by Brantley who was also nominated in the same category, while set and costume designers Eugene Lee and Susan Hilferty were the show’s only other winners).
But last week, as every week, it scored 100% attendance at the Broadway box office, raking in a phenomenal $1.7m, making it the highest grossing show on Broadway. That’s seven years into the run; by now, many shows would have started to run out of steam. It’s interesting that 'Avenue Q', which beat it to those all-important Tony’s, has actually long returned to off-Broadway where it began. And 'The Producers' which won a record 12 Tony Awards after it opened in 2001, only raked up a total run of 6 years in all.
It came to London in 2006, and here some critics were famously dismissive, too. 'The score is insipid, the production witless, charmless, brainless and tedious', wrote the Mail on Sunday’s Georgina Brown.
Yet last year the show took box office receipts in the West End of over £27m, and has now grossed over £100m so far in London alone.
The show’s London executive producer Michael McCabe recently told me how its success in London had never been taken for granted.
'I was told by people in the UK theatre industry that I had the hardest job of all! We opened in a year when many other shows opened, too - like 'Monty Python’s Spamalot' and 'The Sound Of Music'.
It has outlived both of them in the West End.
“Wicked' wasn’t by any means a dead cert. We were not one of the frontrunners. And we took a few knocks at the beginning. Some of the reviews were very mixed. The show was ignored by the Laurence Olivier Awards. It was ignored by everyone but the audiences, who came in droves. What happened was that we rode the wave of social media and the word-of-mouth spread very quickly. I haven’t worked on a show before that has been able to benefit so much and so fast from that new invention.”
The timing, in other words, was just right, and 'Wicked' has become that all important thing, the “audience” show.
Never mind what the critics say, audiences love it. And it’s certainly true that they get plenty of bang for their buck, as the saying goes: you can see just where your money has been spent.
And seeing it again last night, I observed it once again working it’s now familiar magic: a musical about the casting of spells clearly casts one over its audience. That’s despite the terrible series of obstacles you have to encounter before you even get into the auditorium, or even the theatre itself, which is currently barricaded on both sides by building works, whether to Vauxhall Bridge Road on one side or for Victoria station improvements on the other Wilton’s Road side). Then there’s the hopeless box office, with the queue for ticket collections stretching down the entire length of the theatre building on the Wilton’s Road side. I gave up waiting and simply decided to collect at the very last minute, once the queue had finally dissipated. That wasn’t until 7.28pm.
The box office also couldn’t, or wouldn’t, supply the usual press programme, and insisted that none would be available for me. In fact, I feel I have saved a tree in having it denied me; and actually the glossy £7 item is hardly necessary. All the information you require, including full cast biographies, is available on the excellent website, that is constantly updated, too, with cast absences for holidays etc.
The expensive combined souvenir programme brochure is a worrying trend, by the way: I’ve noticed in the last week of revisiting some old shows that 'Spamalot', 'Legally Blonde' and 'Billy Elliot' have all embraced this way of providing programmes in this way.
It’s another factor in making an expensive night out even more expensive.
And then a final irritation that would drive Lynn Truss nuts: the door to the stalls stage left gents is labelled “Gentlemens”. If that’s the standard of literacy in the theatre’s signage, what hope is there for the show’s own literacy? At one point, a sign is flown in: “Congratulotions” and I thought, clearly the same sign-writers have been used.
But actually the show demonstrates a high level of storytelling and emotional intelligence that is unquestionably part of its huge appeal: here’s an unashamedly populist piece of theatremaking that dares to question the demonization of difference, and even raise echoes of certain recent American presidential philosophies, embodied by the Wizard’s claim here, “The best way to bring people together is to give them a real good enemy.” This is definitely a post 9/11 musical.
And it’s all delivered with knockout visuals and even bigger knockout performances. The show has been maintained in tip-top shape from a casting perspective, and the current one is the best I’ve yet seen in London: indeed, Louise Dearman is the best I’ve ever seen in the role of Glinda.
Yes, you still want to slap this character, frequently; but Dearman brings an oozing vocal attack to it that is spellbinding. I first noticed her holding her own amongst a cast that also included the wonderful Sally Ann Triplett and Frances Ruffelle in a short-lived William Finn revue, 'Make Me A Song', at the New Players a few years ago; she subsequently proved a wonderful Eva Peron in the launch of the current 'Evita' national (and now European) tour. (There’s a wonderful echo of the most iconic moment from that show, when Eva, addressing a crowd, raises her arms vertically in imploring salute, that Glinda does here, too).
But Dearman isn’t the only endearing new cast addition. Her co-star Rachel Tucker, a semi finalist on the TV “I’d Do Anything' Nancy search, is a terrific, belting Elphaba. Lee Mead, who became an overnight star when he won the previous “Any Dream Will Do” TV contest to play the title role in 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat', has eased into the supporting role of Fiyero with dash and aplomb; Mead’s clearly not holding out just for starring roles, but happy to build a CV by returning to work his way through the ranks of other roles. And he’s earning his spurs as a result.
Of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber is even now preparing to bring 'Wicked'’s source material 'The Wizard Of Oz' back to the stage, with coincidentally another reality TV casting for the role of Dorothy recently leading the way before he’d even written additional songs for it with Tim Rice. This prequel to 'The Wizard Of Oz' is going to give him a tough act to follow; just as his own 'The Phantom Of The Opera' did for 'Love Never Dies' (which I incidentally noticed was available at the TKTS half price booth last Saturday night, where you’ll never find 'Wicked').
How do you explain the phenomenon of Wicked?
When it premiered in New York in October 2003, after an earlier try-out in San Francisco, Ben Brantley in the New York Times was dismissive, labelling it a 'Technicolorized sermon of a musical' and calling it an 'equally arch and earnest show'.
He reserved his praise only for star Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda, saying she “must put across jokes and sight gags that could make angels fall. Never for a second, though, does she threaten to crash to earth. Even lying down, Ms. Chenoweth, who performed similar magic in 'You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown' four years ago (and won a Tony), remains airborne, proving that in the perilous skies of Broadway, nothing can top undiluted star power as aviation fuel. Be grateful, very grateful, that Ms. Chenoweth, who spent a brief exile in the land of sitcoms, has returned to the stage with none of the routinized glibness associated with weekly television. She provides the essential helium in a bloated production that might otherwise spend close to three hours flapping its oversized wings without taking off.”
But take off this show most certainly did, even though it was beaten to that season’s Tony Award for Best Musical by 'Avenue Q'.
It also lost in most of its other major categories, too (only Idina Menzel, playing Elphaba, won a performance Tony for Best Actress, eclipsing the praise heaped on Chenoweth by Brantley who was also nominated in the same category, while set and costume designers Eugene Lee and Susan Hilferty were the show’s only other winners).
But last week, as every week, it scored 100% attendance at the Broadway box office, raking in a phenomenal $1.7m, making it the highest grossing show on Broadway. That’s seven years into the run; by now, many shows would have started to run out of steam. It’s interesting that 'Avenue Q', which beat it to those all-important Tony’s, has actually long returned to off-Broadway where it began. And 'The Producers' which won a record 12 Tony Awards after it opened in 2001, only raked up a total run of 6 years in all.
It came to London in 2006, and here some critics were famously dismissive, too. 'The score is insipid, the production witless, charmless, brainless and tedious', wrote the Mail on Sunday’s Georgina Brown.
Yet last year the show took box office receipts in the West End of over £27m, and has now grossed over £100m so far in London alone.
The show’s London executive producer Michael McCabe recently told me how its success in London had never been taken for granted.
'I was told by people in the UK theatre industry that I had the hardest job of all! We opened in a year when many other shows opened, too - like 'Monty Python’s Spamalot' and 'The Sound Of Music'.
It has outlived both of them in the West End.
“Wicked' wasn’t by any means a dead cert. We were not one of the frontrunners. And we took a few knocks at the beginning. Some of the reviews were very mixed. The show was ignored by the Laurence Olivier Awards. It was ignored by everyone but the audiences, who came in droves. What happened was that we rode the wave of social media and the word-of-mouth spread very quickly. I haven’t worked on a show before that has been able to benefit so much and so fast from that new invention.”
The timing, in other words, was just right, and 'Wicked' has become that all important thing, the “audience” show.
Never mind what the critics say, audiences love it. And it’s certainly true that they get plenty of bang for their buck, as the saying goes: you can see just where your money has been spent.
And seeing it again last night, I observed it once again working it’s now familiar magic: a musical about the casting of spells clearly casts one over its audience. That’s despite the terrible series of obstacles you have to encounter before you even get into the auditorium, or even the theatre itself, which is currently barricaded on both sides by building works, whether to Vauxhall Bridge Road on one side or for Victoria station improvements on the other Wilton’s Road side). Then there’s the hopeless box office, with the queue for ticket collections stretching down the entire length of the theatre building on the Wilton’s Road side. I gave up waiting and simply decided to collect at the very last minute, once the queue had finally dissipated. That wasn’t until 7.28pm.
The box office also couldn’t, or wouldn’t, supply the usual press programme, and insisted that none would be available for me. In fact, I feel I have saved a tree in having it denied me; and actually the glossy £7 item is hardly necessary. All the information you require, including full cast biographies, is available on the excellent website, that is constantly updated, too, with cast absences for holidays etc.
The expensive combined souvenir programme brochure is a worrying trend, by the way: I’ve noticed in the last week of revisiting some old shows that 'Spamalot', 'Legally Blonde' and 'Billy Elliot' have all embraced this way of providing programmes in this way.
It’s another factor in making an expensive night out even more expensive.
And then a final irritation that would drive Lynn Truss nuts: the door to the stalls stage left gents is labelled “Gentlemens”. If that’s the standard of literacy in the theatre’s signage, what hope is there for the show’s own literacy? At one point, a sign is flown in: “Congratulotions” and I thought, clearly the same sign-writers have been used.
But actually the show demonstrates a high level of storytelling and emotional intelligence that is unquestionably part of its huge appeal: here’s an unashamedly populist piece of theatremaking that dares to question the demonization of difference, and even raise echoes of certain recent American presidential philosophies, embodied by the Wizard’s claim here, “The best way to bring people together is to give them a real good enemy.” This is definitely a post 9/11 musical.
And it’s all delivered with knockout visuals and even bigger knockout performances. The show has been maintained in tip-top shape from a casting perspective, and the current one is the best I’ve yet seen in London: indeed, Louise Dearman is the best I’ve ever seen in the role of Glinda.
Yes, you still want to slap this character, frequently; but Dearman brings an oozing vocal attack to it that is spellbinding. I first noticed her holding her own amongst a cast that also included the wonderful Sally Ann Triplett and Frances Ruffelle in a short-lived William Finn revue, 'Make Me A Song', at the New Players a few years ago; she subsequently proved a wonderful Eva Peron in the launch of the current 'Evita' national (and now European) tour. (There’s a wonderful echo of the most iconic moment from that show, when Eva, addressing a crowd, raises her arms vertically in imploring salute, that Glinda does here, too).
But Dearman isn’t the only endearing new cast addition. Her co-star Rachel Tucker, a semi finalist on the TV “I’d Do Anything' Nancy search, is a terrific, belting Elphaba. Lee Mead, who became an overnight star when he won the previous “Any Dream Will Do” TV contest to play the title role in 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat', has eased into the supporting role of Fiyero with dash and aplomb; Mead’s clearly not holding out just for starring roles, but happy to build a CV by returning to work his way through the ranks of other roles. And he’s earning his spurs as a result.
Of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber is even now preparing to bring 'Wicked'’s source material 'The Wizard Of Oz' back to the stage, with coincidentally another reality TV casting for the role of Dorothy recently leading the way before he’d even written additional songs for it with Tim Rice. This prequel to 'The Wizard Of Oz' is going to give him a tough act to follow; just as his own 'The Phantom Of The Opera' did for 'Love Never Dies' (which I incidentally noticed was available at the TKTS half price booth last Saturday night, where you’ll never find 'Wicked').
Updated On: 8/3/10 at 06:24 AM
.gif?width=300)
