Wicked on Leno Tonight — Page 2

The appearance was planned well in advance.
And with large shows like this and with considerations like Equity rules, costume transport, etc., they can't just pull together a production number last minute to replace "some band".

I was watching Tori Spelling on the show and then I saw that they had Wicked on, Eden is probably the best Elphaba, she sounded amazing and looked great. Megan was also great, I remember I saw her live, when I saw the show in 2004, she was the understudy. Great number, one of my favorites from the show. Yet it is a show from...2004, meaning, it's an old show.

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At the top of the show, Jay said, "We have the cast of the Tony Award winning musical WICKED".

It didn't win Best Musical, book, score or direction. Idina and the costumes won.

He should have said "We have the Los Angeles cast of the musical WICKED, wearing some Tony Award winning costumes".

I've always regretted not being able to see Megan as Glinda; I've only heard good things about her. However, if this was my first exposure to her, I'm not sure I'd feel that way. She seemed very uncomfortable. And I don't get Eden Espinosa; she's so young and I feel like she'd have a lot of energy and personality in her Elphaba. On the contrary, she just comes off as old and boring, especially on that video. Maybe it's just that scene, but she didn't seem to be getting into her character at all.

The last time WICKED was in LA, they did the Tonight Show and sang ONE SHORT DAY. Since the two leads aren't really big stars (outside of our circles!) the best way to sell the show is a big fancy cast number. They were just OK.

I enjoyed it.

Yeah, but there's a vast difference between a toned-down performance that comes across well on TV and the meek awkwardness last night. Both Megan and Eden have performed on talk shows before, so there's no reason why they wouldn't know the difference at this point.

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Don't think they had a matinee yesterday, as they do a sound check in the morning, break for lunch (they swarmed the NBC Commie) and camera run through at 1:30-2 ish, then taping at 4:30P

I mean it was ok. Megan seems very cute and her voice is good but she does nothing for me. I just really do not see her as a Glinda type...her voice is nowhere near Cheno's style it seemed so low.

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Bad choice of song. Taken out of the context of the show, the humor is completely undermined or lost altogether.

I'm not really sure who they're trying to appeal to here. The people who already know and love WICKED aren't going to need any convincing to see it again, so song choice is irrelevent in their case. The people they should be targeting are the ones who haven't seen or heard of WICKED before, in which case, they should stick with the big 'trademark' numbers like DG or Popular. If I'd never seen the show before, I'd be a lot more jazzed about it after watching one of THOSE numbers, not 'What Is This Feeling?'

I think the performance was fine, considering they were under blaring TV studio lights . Theatre stage lighting adds SO much to a scene, and not having that "atmosphere" can really sap the energy from a number. And of course they're dealing with a much smaller space than they're probably used to.

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What is with that pit that was playing with them, are they all site reading?

Horton:

Most likely the were reading as there were cuts made in the song that they might not be aware of, or day players hired for this performance, as some of the regular show pit players might not have been able to be there all day at NBC (other jobs, teaching gigs, etc.)

does anyone know what was different about Hilty's wig?!?! it seemed extremely different... straighter maybe??