Mendez has stood out to me so many times over the years that I made a point to attend her first performance. She didn't disappoint. Rarely have I heard Elphaba's music sung so well. By the end of "The Wizard and I," I was sure I was in for an exhilarating evening. Her "No Good Deed" was thrilling, and she and Derek Klena did a good job with "As Long As You're Mine," though she pretty much outshone him.
Klena needs time to settle in. Fiyero isn't Hamlet, of course, but he could be a little more animated. He has a beautiful, technically perfect voice, but I found him kind of dull overall. He impressed me in DOGFIGHT, though, so I have confidence that he'll get there. (Perhaps his deficiencies were magnified because he was performing opposite someone who was already pretty much all the way there).
Katie Clarke was great. I've heard negative comments about her performance in the past, and I didn't care for her in PIAZZA, but she really won me over here.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
