Post by Sally on Oct 2, 2005 13:40:49 GMT 11
1. if anyone cares because this isn't Australian stuff
2. Possible spoilers for any and all shows; if I think of something to say, I won’t hold back
So you’re warned.
3. I'm not going to write a full-length review for everything I saw because I don't want to bore everyone, so this is just a run-down, but it will probably be long because I saw quite a few things, and I like to talk, rotfl. Full-length stuff has been and will be on my livejournal, in an unlocked post, if anyone actually wants more.
Anyway.
I went overseas, I got back Friday morning, I slept 16 1/2 hours over Friday night so I'd be sufficiently awake for Oklahoma on Saturday evening - and yes I planned the dates so I could get home in time because missing Oklahoma was out of the question! Especially with that cast! Anyway, here’s what I got up to:
11/09/05 (matinee) (I arrived in SF on the 10th, gaah)
Wicked
Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco – row C of balcony, on the right hand side of the central block. All cast present except an understudy for the Witch’s mother.
My first time seeing Wicked ;D My first time seeing Wicked!!! I caught the closing show of the tour’s leg in San Francisco and it was just the most insane experience ever...the energy was incredible, and not just from the cast! The minute the lights went down there was wild applause, everyone got an entrance applause, the seemingly most random lines got applause. It was also Eden Espinosa’s last show (she only did the SF leg of the tour) so it was doubly special because of that. And just...wow. I loved her before; I worship her now. She was just going to town with her songs – suddenly shooting up an octave higher than what was written, riffing like crazy...certainly making sure she went out with a bang! She and Kendra Kassebaum (Glinda) had chemistry like crazy, and Kendra was the most amazing Glinda – she has such a rich, deep voice that she’s unlike anyone else I’ve heard, and she has such power that she could easily be an Elphaba herself, but she has the character of Glinda down pat. Her ‘Popular’ is one giant moment of comic genius, and she really plays up to the audience as much as possible. And ‘Defying Gravity’ is, trust me, something that needs to be seen from up high. It’s the most incredible theatrical moment I’ve ever bore witness to and I spent most of interval quite stunned. ‘For Good’ was so beautifully teary, and the audience, god, they were just high! At the end when Fiyero/Scarecrow opened the trapdoor and there’s Elphaba, the audience just exploded. And I have extreme fondness for the guy next to me whose reaction to that was “No way!” – how wonderful to just not know at all what happens!
Also? The bubble machine went a bit psycho on Kendra, and she swallowed a mouthful before batting them away with her wand, which was priceless
Stagedooring afterwards was a frightening experience, rotfl. Fortunately Eden took her time and when she came out there was only a handful of people left, so I was actually able to say a few words to her, as well as Logan Lipton who was the world’s most adorable Boq.
From up in the balcony I couldn’t check out the entire theatre, but it was extremely ornate, and though I’ve never actually been in the Princess, that’s what it reminded me of. It was small though – despite being on the third level, my seat was wonderful.
14/09/05 (I arrived in NY on the 13th)
Wicked
Gershwin Theatre, New York – row D of stalls (‘orchestra’), in the left-hand block. Understudy for Elphaba.
I always said I wanted to see understudies so I’d have as many casts as possible to compare, so it was rather nice starting off that way with one of the leads out Saycon Sengbloh as Elphaba was very different to Eden and in my mind, couldn’t quite match up – because seriously, it’s gonna take nothing short of Idina Menzel to possibly compare to Eden, rotfl. ‘The Wizard and I’ is my favourite song and the first big Elphaba number and she just started it very slowly, so I died a little inside at that, but then her belt was amazing and I was won over, luckily. She plays Elphaba very young, very wide-eyed and innocent, which was beautiful in act 1 but seemed a little odd in act 2. Megan Hilty though, as Glinda, totally made me go “Kendra who?” (and for that matter, “Kristin who?”) She has the most amazing voice and as much as I still adore Kendra, I have to admit that Megan is by far the better singer. She played Galinda very different to Kendra though – extremely immature and spoilt and show-offy, where as Kendra was a bit more mature. Hence it made the act 2/Glinda transition achingly poignant. Her ‘Popular’ also had me in tears of mirth. And the applause after it was thunderous – and so well-deserved! It’s her Broadway debut and anyone sceptical was just won over well and truly by that point.
The theatre – my first impression was, this place is small! I always imagined the Gershwin to be this vast, cavernous place, and I’m not saying it was tiny – it was big, just not nearly as big as I was expecting. The last row didn’t look like it’d be all that bad a seat, and also, the elevation of each row was incredible.
Compared to SF Wicked, there were a lot of differences as well with the stage and the setting – the touring production is quite obviously pared down: the ensemble is smaller by four, the overture and several other musical interludes are truncated, there’s only one trapdoor instead of three (so to suddenly have Elphaba rising up when before she’d just run on was quite an experience!), there’s no stairs and balconies at the sides of the stage, the monkeys don’t fly out over the audience...anyway, that all said, one thing that hugely surprised me about Wicked is the simplicity of the set. It’s really all about the lighting, and the *suggestion* of what is around.
It was also a strange experience going from the closing show of a tour leg, with someone’s last performance, to just a regular Wednesday night in NY with an understudy – all the things in SF that got random applause just didn’t in the Gershwin.
16/09/05
Sweet Charity
Al Hirschfield Theatre – row O of stalls, dead centre.
All cast present.
This was a gimme to my friend, who saw it a while back and wanted to see it again, and I was interested but on my own steam would possibly have never seen it. Which would have been very bad because it was an incredible show! And Christina Applegate can actually sing, and very well too for that matter. She was the most gorgeous Charity and the show itself was such fun – I wasn’t familiar with it at all save for a few numbers, and I just loved it. I really want TPC to get onto it It’s just a fun show that’s all about the singing and dancing, and Charity’s a gorgeous character. My eyes were mostly on Janine LaManna (Nickie) though – she was awesome! (She was also Paquette in Candide, if you ever got around to watching that Julia?)
The theatre: is tiny! It was like a mini version of the Maj, seriously.
17/09/05 (matinee)
But I’m a Cheerleader!
Theatre at St. Clements – about fourth row, dead centre (it was general admission)
Part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival so this was basically an off-off-Broadway $15 show that we thought, eh, might as well see, because it has the chick from Rent in it (Kelly Karbacz who was the last Maureen that we missed seeing by like a fortnight) – and my god it was incredible!!! Certainly one of the highlights! I didn’t and still don’t know the film that it was based on at all, but it was seriously such a fun show, and despite all the comedy and tackiness – pulling fun at itself, mostly – it was also a really touching story. It was a new musical as part of the festival and looking for funding so they can produce it on a grand scale and (hopefully) take it overseas and god yes! We need that show down here, for sure.
The theatre: think BMW Edge, then halve the size...then halve it again, and again, for good measure.
Tried the Wicked lottery that afternoon, as did about 300 other people. Lost, along with 280 other people
18/09/05
Broadway on Broadway
Times Square – in the very front section, about twenty feet from the stage.
A production in itself that involved getting up at 6 (so thank god we lost the Wicked lottery!), leaving at 7, and arriving at 8:30 to join the queue that was already an entire block long. The show started at 11:30 and went for about two hours and basically it’s a lot of the major shows on at the moment – and some new ones about to open – presenting a song for each, all completely free on an outdoor stage. Avenue Q, Sweet Charity and Spelling Bee were highlights, and of course the girls from Wicked did the most gorgeous ‘For Good’ which was the best part of the show ;D And then at the end they dumped about five tonnes of confetti on Times Square and for the rest of the day, there was confetti everywhere you turned. Seriously, five blocks away, stores were sweeping it up and out of their doorways, and I couldn’t help but think that no matter how pretty it looked all floating down, that’s one hell of a clean-up job that NYC doesn’t really need, rotfl.
19/09/05
Broadway Unplugged
Town Hall – row J or something of the balcony, on the left hand side.
The gimmick being the singers have no microphones, so these are all the voices that can fill a theatre on their own. A lot of people I didn’t know, a lot of amazing people that I still don’t know – one of the best parts of the night was five grown men singing ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ from Annie, rotfl. We went to see Sutton Foster though and she did not disappoint – she and Marc Kudisch did ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better’ which they completely screwed up about four times, it was hilarious ;D
The Town Hall: gorgeous, ornate place, and quite small so our ‘cheap seats’ were actually very good.
20/09/05
Apart from picking up a DVD to watch that night, we didn’t leave the house, and can you blame us??
21/09/05 (matinee)
Wicked
Gershwin Theatre, row F of the stalls and dead centre. Wowness. Understudies for Morrible, Nessarose, Witch’s Mother, and Midwife.
My third Wicked and my third Elphaba – not to mention the plethora of understudies listed (although there was a lot of jumping there as the Nessa understudy is usually the Witch’s Mother, etc) – and absolutely awesome seats. We lucked out incredibly with those! I preferred Shoshana to Saycon as Elphaba but was still missing Eden, although Megan Hilty just got even better. She does this “ooooh” in ‘Popular’ and then repeats it later and I swear, it’s the most hilarious thing ever. She’s like a seven year old child. And I’ll get shot down if I say this to the wrong people, but Adinah Alexander as Madame Morrible was absolutely, without a doubt, the best Morrible I saw. Forget the big names they keep calling in, give her the damn part! Not that I didn’t like Rue McClanahan – I enjoyed her Morrible far more than Carol Kane’s (SF) and thought Morrible couldn’t get any better, until Adinah came along. Shoshana and Megan had more chemistry than Saycon and Megan, but were still miles behind Eden and Kendra, but there’s this one bit that Shoshana does in ‘What is This Feeling’ where she totally bumps Megan out of the way, and the look of abject horror on Megan’s face that the icky green girl has touched her is just priceless. Although one bit from the same song that I seriously missed – Eden totally taking the piss out of Kendra (at the line “every little trait however small”), which Shoshana still did to Megan, but in a different way and about 1584 notches lower on the hilarity scale. The choreography of that song though, is surely something to watch. As is – and most especially – ‘Dancing Through Life’. It’s just non-stop! The ensemble of this show are incredible too – there is always something to watch, if you can tear your eyes away from Megan Hilty ever. They’re always doing something, and always doing something different.
21/09/05
Wicked (evening)
Gershwin Theatre, front row of the stalls – last seat on the right hand side, aka ‘partial view’ until the pair next to me left at interval and I moved over and spent the last 45 minutes of the show with a perfect view Same understudies as above (so yay, Adinah again!!)
We got these seats like four days beforehand – I was checking online to see if we could squeeze the show in again, and of course they were all sold out until this one and its beautiful front row tickets popped up and I about fell off my chair. My friend had the last seat on the left, I was on the right, so we had totally different views. One thing though, as incredible as it is to see all the detail, you don’t want to see ‘Defying Gravity’ from this close because you can see all the machinery and it spoils the illusion just a smidge I lucked out on my side because Megan seemed to really favour it, and the best part was during the ‘melting’ when she was just right there, in front of me, and seriously, she has the most expressive face to watch when the action isn’t focused on her – she’s constantly reacting! There’s one bit where they utilise the balconies and I had Boq right above my head, and I wasn’t about to get a stiff neck looking at him so I looked over at the other balcony where Glinda and Morrible are waiting in the shadows and they just totally had their own thing going on there. I also had a monkey leap out in my face which scared the living crap out of me, and at the start of the show – they shower the front section with streamers and, as I found out when I got covered, confetti. Hee. (All the other times the streamers missed us by about a row) The front trapdoor too, was right where I was seated. Right there.
23/09/05
Rent
Nederlander Theatre, front row of the circle (‘mezzanine’), about two to the right of dead centre. Understudy for Mimi.
We had to see Rent before the movie came out, it was a given. I must say though, I was glad I was already very familiar with the show and its story because there’s so many characters, and so many tales going on, that if you went in absolutely blind you might be just a little confused. Now for me, Rent is all about Maureen and Joanne, and the first thing I noticed was how absolutely gorgeous and spot-on our Joanne (Merle Dandridge) looked, and then she sung and whoa! Talk about a stand-out. And our Maureen (Ava Gaudet), from the distance at which we were sitting, looked a lot like Idina only a bit smaller – she didn’t fill out the cat suit half as well. Yes, I make strange observations. But she too had a gorgeous voice, and just the right attitude. Her ‘Over the Moon’ was insanely weird like nothing else (and not entirely in the good way) so it was a bit of a ‘hmm’ introduction to her, but she totally owned act 2 and won me over like no other.
The show itself? Very loud, very fast-moving, very personal and confronting. I don’t regret not seeing it when it was here because my interest has only picked up in the last year or so, and seriously our main reason for seeing it at all was so we wouldn’t just be of the masses who saw the movie first, rotfl.
The theatre: was closed down for restorations literally two days after we saw Rent, and all I can say is thank god because it sure needs it But that said, it’s Rent, so having a really crappy, horrible looking theatre works for it. (It just doesn’t need to be that crappy and horrible )
25/09/05 (10-6)
Broadway Flea Market
Shubert Alley and 44th Street
Totally the most amazing experience ever (though another painfully early start – with good traffic, we were an 80 minute drive from NYC. With bad, we got stuck on the final crawl into the Lincoln Tunnel for an hour, raar) – think a giant market, with most of the current Broadway shows having their own table and selling stuff, as well as a lot of general tables. Playbills galore! And all nice and cheap, so I got a huge pile but didn’t spend that much money. My only ‘big’ purchase was a Wicked prop (would you expect anything less?) – one of Elphaba’s essays, signed by Idina. There was also a celebrity table where you pay $20 to meet everyone there and get photos if you wish, so we queued up for Bebe Neuwirth who just totally kept me in conversation for about two minutes – and this is Bebe the goddess, so I was very much in shock that a) she understood my accent and 2) she was still talking to me, rotfl. Very tiring, but a lot of fun – we went away and then came back again at the end when a lot of stuff was reduced, if there was any left. The Wicked table was understandably one of the first to pretty much clear
25/09/05 (evening)
Hurricane Katrina Benefit
Gershwin Theatre, row B of the circle, slightly left of centre.
Oh my god. My timing was perfect – this was announced when I was over there and we were tossing up until we saw Bebe Neuwirth listed and pretty much got tickets straight away, based on her appearance And then, they kept adding people, and adding people, and the list was expanding, and suddenly, on the Wednesday night Wicked, I saw a leaflet tacked up on the wall with the latest additions (as in MORE since the matinee of Wicked) and tucked away so nicely down the bottom of the list? Idina Menzel. I swear, I was *this* close to bursting into tears, rotfl. This was after my friend and I had parted to go in our separate doors, and I had been lingering at the merchandise stand – once I saw Idina’s name I just bolted inside, dropped my stuff, and ran across the front to her seat to tell her because waiting until interval would have been impossible
The concert itself was hellishly long (interval didn’t START until 10:20) but there were so many incredible people there, and it was awesome for something that had been put together in a very short amount of time. It was presented by the Wicked cast, and just had everyone there – the casts of Rent, Avenue Q, Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Light in the Piazza, Spelling Bee...many others...like, full casts too, not just a few people here and there. Bernadette Peters, Bebe of course, Julia Murney (*dies*), Idina in a gorgeous white dress who did an acoustic version of ‘I’ll Cover You’ from Rent and I can’t remember what else happened after her, rotfl. Megan Hilty though stole the show (after Idina, a long way after Idina) with the most hilarious performance of ‘Alto’s Lament’ ever.
27/09/05
Wicked
Gershwin Theatre, row B of the circle, slightly left of centre. Understudies for Fiyero and Nessarose (different understudy to last time!)
I said earlier I wanted understudies for everyone, but by the time it came to the end, I would have seriously wept had Megan Hilty been out. Fortunately, the Glinda stand-by is also the other Nessa understudy, so we were lucky enough to still see her, without losing Megan. Yay! So that brought the total Nessas seen to four, not bad. The first NY one was Michelle Federer who’s one of the few original cast members remaining, so it was just wonderful to be fortunate enough to see her
And no one yells out “it was Elphaba!” quite like Fed, rotfl. There’s also just a little personal ‘yay’ at being able to see an original cast member, and also that it was Michelle. The only two I’d have really liked to have seen would have been her or Idina. (If you’d asked me a month ago I’d have also said Kristin but that was before witnessing the gloriousness of Megan )
I was also very pleased to see a Fiyero understudy because the NY Fiyero never quite cut it for me after the marvellousness of the tour one And also, from up in the circle, he looked like Scott Irwin, so I liked him immediately because of that, and was able to forgive him when he went flat and then flubbed his lines a few times, rotfl. Anyway, the tour Fiyero (Derrick Williams) is black, and if you’ve read the book you’ll know Fiyero is dark-skinned, so pretty much every white Fiyero ever has irked me. I was so lucky that my first Fiyero looked how a Fiyero should look, so when the first NY one (David Ayers) came out – smarmy looking white git with big hair – I just went ‘ew, no’. And then, he spent the entire of ‘Dancing Through Life’ absolutely losing it, cracking up on every second line, and it totally won me over, so I loved him after that I still don’t like the characterisation of act 1 Fiyero though, and nothing is ever going to change that. But he’s more worthy in act 2 at least
It was good to be up high again, because there’s a lot that you miss from being close – for one thing, when you’re in the stalls and can see the giant skirt billowing in ‘Defying Gravity’, it’s just nowhere near as enchanting as being up high when all you can see is her upper half, bathed in light – it makes you really believe she’s flying. And also the full effect of the Dragon watching over the stage, and the silhouettes of the flying monkeys once Elphaba has released them – that was one thing I noticed in SF that seemed missing in NY until I got to this last show and realised, well they were there all along, it’s just that when you’re down close, you have no reason to be looking directly up
I also had my copy of Son of a Witch (the sequel to the novel of Wicked) with me that performance because it had just been released that day, and it wouldn’t fit in my bag, so it ended up drawing a lot of attention from various audience members, the merchandise guy, Megan Hilty, rotfl.
So yeah, Wicked five times, Idina, and a few other things. So I’m content enough if it takes a year before I ever see Wicked again Also, it’s actually really good. I mean, as a person who worships the book, who has read it so many times she can find a page reference in 11 seconds, who won’t go further than an hour from home without it; I’ve been picking apart the musical all year. I loved the songs straight off the bat, but there were so many aspects of the story that were changed that irked me. However, actually seeing it, as opposed to just reading the libretto and seeing/hearing small bits – it works. Now there’s still one or two things that will never sit with me, but I can’t totally shred it now. For one thing, the idea of Fiyero/Glinda always made me gag, but it’s not really that at all – she just likes him because he’s rich and good looking and has a reputation, which is something book Galinda would certainly do He, on the other hand, doesn’t really have any interest in her. Phew
Oh and I love the playbills they give out in the US, they should do that here Although I still ended up getting the big, glossy programmes as well because I'm quite a programme person. I got the Wicked one in SF (it's OBC so all the same) which was a good choice because the tour playbill doesn't have headshots, but the programme insert did.
If anyone read more than a third of that, I'll give you a cookie
2. Possible spoilers for any and all shows; if I think of something to say, I won’t hold back
So you’re warned.3. I'm not going to write a full-length review for everything I saw because I don't want to bore everyone, so this is just a run-down, but it will probably be long because I saw quite a few things, and I like to talk, rotfl. Full-length stuff has been and will be on my livejournal, in an unlocked post, if anyone actually wants more.
Anyway.
I went overseas, I got back Friday morning, I slept 16 1/2 hours over Friday night so I'd be sufficiently awake for Oklahoma on Saturday evening - and yes I planned the dates so I could get home in time because missing Oklahoma was out of the question! Especially with that cast! Anyway, here’s what I got up to:
11/09/05 (matinee) (I arrived in SF on the 10th, gaah)
Wicked
Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco – row C of balcony, on the right hand side of the central block. All cast present except an understudy for the Witch’s mother.
My first time seeing Wicked ;D My first time seeing Wicked!!! I caught the closing show of the tour’s leg in San Francisco and it was just the most insane experience ever...the energy was incredible, and not just from the cast! The minute the lights went down there was wild applause, everyone got an entrance applause, the seemingly most random lines got applause. It was also Eden Espinosa’s last show (she only did the SF leg of the tour) so it was doubly special because of that. And just...wow. I loved her before; I worship her now. She was just going to town with her songs – suddenly shooting up an octave higher than what was written, riffing like crazy...certainly making sure she went out with a bang! She and Kendra Kassebaum (Glinda) had chemistry like crazy, and Kendra was the most amazing Glinda – she has such a rich, deep voice that she’s unlike anyone else I’ve heard, and she has such power that she could easily be an Elphaba herself, but she has the character of Glinda down pat. Her ‘Popular’ is one giant moment of comic genius, and she really plays up to the audience as much as possible. And ‘Defying Gravity’ is, trust me, something that needs to be seen from up high. It’s the most incredible theatrical moment I’ve ever bore witness to and I spent most of interval quite stunned. ‘For Good’ was so beautifully teary, and the audience, god, they were just high! At the end when Fiyero/Scarecrow opened the trapdoor and there’s Elphaba, the audience just exploded. And I have extreme fondness for the guy next to me whose reaction to that was “No way!” – how wonderful to just not know at all what happens!
Also? The bubble machine went a bit psycho on Kendra, and she swallowed a mouthful before batting them away with her wand, which was priceless
Stagedooring afterwards was a frightening experience, rotfl. Fortunately Eden took her time and when she came out there was only a handful of people left, so I was actually able to say a few words to her, as well as Logan Lipton who was the world’s most adorable Boq.
From up in the balcony I couldn’t check out the entire theatre, but it was extremely ornate, and though I’ve never actually been in the Princess, that’s what it reminded me of. It was small though – despite being on the third level, my seat was wonderful.
14/09/05 (I arrived in NY on the 13th)
Wicked
Gershwin Theatre, New York – row D of stalls (‘orchestra’), in the left-hand block. Understudy for Elphaba.
I always said I wanted to see understudies so I’d have as many casts as possible to compare, so it was rather nice starting off that way with one of the leads out
Saycon Sengbloh as Elphaba was very different to Eden and in my mind, couldn’t quite match up – because seriously, it’s gonna take nothing short of Idina Menzel to possibly compare to Eden, rotfl. ‘The Wizard and I’ is my favourite song and the first big Elphaba number and she just started it very slowly, so I died a little inside at that, but then her belt was amazing and I was won over, luckily. She plays Elphaba very young, very wide-eyed and innocent, which was beautiful in act 1 but seemed a little odd in act 2. Megan Hilty though, as Glinda, totally made me go “Kendra who?” (and for that matter, “Kristin who?”) She has the most amazing voice and as much as I still adore Kendra, I have to admit that Megan is by far the better singer. She played Galinda very different to Kendra though – extremely immature and spoilt and show-offy, where as Kendra was a bit more mature. Hence it made the act 2/Glinda transition achingly poignant. Her ‘Popular’ also had me in tears of mirth. And the applause after it was thunderous – and so well-deserved! It’s her Broadway debut and anyone sceptical was just won over well and truly by that point.The theatre – my first impression was, this place is small! I always imagined the Gershwin to be this vast, cavernous place, and I’m not saying it was tiny – it was big, just not nearly as big as I was expecting. The last row didn’t look like it’d be all that bad a seat, and also, the elevation of each row was incredible.
Compared to SF Wicked, there were a lot of differences as well with the stage and the setting – the touring production is quite obviously pared down: the ensemble is smaller by four, the overture and several other musical interludes are truncated, there’s only one trapdoor instead of three (so to suddenly have Elphaba rising up when before she’d just run on was quite an experience!), there’s no stairs and balconies at the sides of the stage, the monkeys don’t fly out over the audience...anyway, that all said, one thing that hugely surprised me about Wicked is the simplicity of the set. It’s really all about the lighting, and the *suggestion* of what is around.
It was also a strange experience going from the closing show of a tour leg, with someone’s last performance, to just a regular Wednesday night in NY with an understudy – all the things in SF that got random applause just didn’t in the Gershwin.
16/09/05
Sweet Charity
Al Hirschfield Theatre – row O of stalls, dead centre.
All cast present.
This was a gimme to my friend, who saw it a while back and wanted to see it again, and I was interested but on my own steam would possibly have never seen it. Which would have been very bad because it was an incredible show! And Christina Applegate can actually sing, and very well too for that matter. She was the most gorgeous Charity and the show itself was such fun – I wasn’t familiar with it at all save for a few numbers, and I just loved it. I really want TPC to get onto it
It’s just a fun show that’s all about the singing and dancing, and Charity’s a gorgeous character. My eyes were mostly on Janine LaManna (Nickie) though – she was awesome! (She was also Paquette in Candide, if you ever got around to watching that Julia?)The theatre: is tiny! It was like a mini version of the Maj, seriously.
17/09/05 (matinee)
But I’m a Cheerleader!
Theatre at St. Clements – about fourth row, dead centre (it was general admission)
Part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival so this was basically an off-off-Broadway $15 show that we thought, eh, might as well see, because it has the chick from Rent in it (Kelly Karbacz who was the last Maureen that we missed seeing by like a fortnight) – and my god it was incredible!!! Certainly one of the highlights! I didn’t and still don’t know the film that it was based on at all, but it was seriously such a fun show, and despite all the comedy and tackiness – pulling fun at itself, mostly – it was also a really touching story. It was a new musical as part of the festival and looking for funding so they can produce it on a grand scale and (hopefully) take it overseas and god yes! We need that show down here, for sure.
The theatre: think BMW Edge, then halve the size...then halve it again, and again, for good measure.
Tried the Wicked lottery that afternoon, as did about 300 other people. Lost, along with 280 other people
18/09/05
Broadway on Broadway
Times Square – in the very front section, about twenty feet from the stage.
A production in itself that involved getting up at 6 (so thank god we lost the Wicked lottery!), leaving at 7, and arriving at 8:30 to join the queue that was already an entire block long. The show started at 11:30 and went for about two hours and basically it’s a lot of the major shows on at the moment – and some new ones about to open – presenting a song for each, all completely free on an outdoor stage. Avenue Q, Sweet Charity and Spelling Bee were highlights, and of course the girls from Wicked did the most gorgeous ‘For Good’ which was the best part of the show ;D And then at the end they dumped about five tonnes of confetti on Times Square and for the rest of the day, there was confetti everywhere you turned. Seriously, five blocks away, stores were sweeping it up and out of their doorways, and I couldn’t help but think that no matter how pretty it looked all floating down, that’s one hell of a clean-up job that NYC doesn’t really need, rotfl.
19/09/05
Broadway Unplugged
Town Hall – row J or something of the balcony, on the left hand side.
The gimmick being the singers have no microphones, so these are all the voices that can fill a theatre on their own. A lot of people I didn’t know, a lot of amazing people that I still don’t know – one of the best parts of the night was five grown men singing ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ from Annie, rotfl. We went to see Sutton Foster though and she did not disappoint – she and Marc Kudisch did ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better’ which they completely screwed up about four times, it was hilarious ;D
The Town Hall: gorgeous, ornate place, and quite small so our ‘cheap seats’ were actually very good.
20/09/05
Apart from picking up a DVD to watch that night, we didn’t leave the house, and can you blame us??
21/09/05 (matinee)
Wicked
Gershwin Theatre, row F of the stalls and dead centre. Wowness. Understudies for Morrible, Nessarose, Witch’s Mother, and Midwife.
My third Wicked and my third Elphaba – not to mention the plethora of understudies listed (although there was a lot of jumping there as the Nessa understudy is usually the Witch’s Mother, etc) – and absolutely awesome seats. We lucked out incredibly with those! I preferred Shoshana to Saycon as Elphaba but was still missing Eden, although Megan Hilty just got even better. She does this “ooooh” in ‘Popular’ and then repeats it later and I swear, it’s the most hilarious thing ever. She’s like a seven year old child. And I’ll get shot down if I say this to the wrong people, but Adinah Alexander as Madame Morrible was absolutely, without a doubt, the best Morrible I saw. Forget the big names they keep calling in, give her the damn part! Not that I didn’t like Rue McClanahan – I enjoyed her Morrible far more than Carol Kane’s (SF) and thought Morrible couldn’t get any better, until Adinah came along. Shoshana and Megan had more chemistry than Saycon and Megan, but were still miles behind Eden and Kendra, but there’s this one bit that Shoshana does in ‘What is This Feeling’ where she totally bumps Megan out of the way, and the look of abject horror on Megan’s face that the icky green girl has touched her is just priceless. Although one bit from the same song that I seriously missed – Eden totally taking the piss out of Kendra (at the line “every little trait however small”), which Shoshana still did to Megan, but in a different way and about 1584 notches lower on the hilarity scale. The choreography of that song though, is surely something to watch. As is – and most especially – ‘Dancing Through Life’. It’s just non-stop! The ensemble of this show are incredible too – there is always something to watch, if you can tear your eyes away from Megan Hilty ever. They’re always doing something, and always doing something different.
21/09/05
Wicked (evening)
Gershwin Theatre, front row of the stalls – last seat on the right hand side, aka ‘partial view’ until the pair next to me left at interval and I moved over and spent the last 45 minutes of the show with a perfect view
Same understudies as above (so yay, Adinah again!!)We got these seats like four days beforehand – I was checking online to see if we could squeeze the show in again, and of course they were all sold out until this one and its beautiful front row tickets popped up and I about fell off my chair. My friend had the last seat on the left, I was on the right, so we had totally different views. One thing though, as incredible as it is to see all the detail, you don’t want to see ‘Defying Gravity’ from this close because you can see all the machinery and it spoils the illusion just a smidge
I lucked out on my side because Megan seemed to really favour it, and the best part was during the ‘melting’ when she was just right there, in front of me, and seriously, she has the most expressive face to watch when the action isn’t focused on her – she’s constantly reacting! There’s one bit where they utilise the balconies and I had Boq right above my head, and I wasn’t about to get a stiff neck looking at him so I looked over at the other balcony where Glinda and Morrible are waiting in the shadows and they just totally had their own thing going on there. I also had a monkey leap out in my face which scared the living crap out of me, and at the start of the show – they shower the front section with streamers and, as I found out when I got covered, confetti. Hee. (All the other times the streamers missed us by about a row) The front trapdoor too, was right where I was seated. Right there.23/09/05
Rent
Nederlander Theatre, front row of the circle (‘mezzanine’), about two to the right of dead centre. Understudy for Mimi.
We had to see Rent before the movie came out, it was a given. I must say though, I was glad I was already very familiar with the show and its story because there’s so many characters, and so many tales going on, that if you went in absolutely blind you might be just a little confused. Now for me, Rent is all about Maureen and Joanne, and the first thing I noticed was how absolutely gorgeous and spot-on our Joanne (Merle Dandridge) looked, and then she sung and whoa! Talk about a stand-out. And our Maureen (Ava Gaudet), from the distance at which we were sitting, looked a lot like Idina only a bit smaller – she didn’t fill out the cat suit half as well. Yes, I make strange observations. But she too had a gorgeous voice, and just the right attitude. Her ‘Over the Moon’ was insanely weird like nothing else (and not entirely in the good way) so it was a bit of a ‘hmm’ introduction to her, but she totally owned act 2 and won me over like no other.
The show itself? Very loud, very fast-moving, very personal and confronting. I don’t regret not seeing it when it was here because my interest has only picked up in the last year or so, and seriously our main reason for seeing it at all was so we wouldn’t just be of the masses who saw the movie first, rotfl.
The theatre: was closed down for restorations literally two days after we saw Rent, and all I can say is thank god because it sure needs it
But that said, it’s Rent, so having a really crappy, horrible looking theatre works for it. (It just doesn’t need to be that crappy and horrible )25/09/05 (10-6)
Broadway Flea Market
Shubert Alley and 44th Street
Totally the most amazing experience ever (though another painfully early start – with good traffic, we were an 80 minute drive from NYC. With bad, we got stuck on the final crawl into the Lincoln Tunnel for an hour, raar) – think a giant market, with most of the current Broadway shows having their own table and selling stuff, as well as a lot of general tables. Playbills galore! And all nice and cheap, so I got a huge pile but didn’t spend that much money. My only ‘big’ purchase was a Wicked prop (would you expect anything less?) – one of Elphaba’s essays, signed by Idina. There was also a celebrity table where you pay $20 to meet everyone there and get photos if you wish, so we queued up for Bebe Neuwirth who just totally kept me in conversation for about two minutes – and this is Bebe the goddess, so I was very much in shock that a) she understood my accent and 2) she was still talking to me, rotfl. Very tiring, but a lot of fun – we went away and then came back again at the end when a lot of stuff was reduced, if there was any left. The Wicked table was understandably one of the first to pretty much clear
25/09/05 (evening)
Hurricane Katrina Benefit
Gershwin Theatre, row B of the circle, slightly left of centre.
Oh my god. My timing was perfect – this was announced when I was over there and we were tossing up until we saw Bebe Neuwirth listed and pretty much got tickets straight away, based on her appearance
And then, they kept adding people, and adding people, and the list was expanding, and suddenly, on the Wednesday night Wicked, I saw a leaflet tacked up on the wall with the latest additions (as in MORE since the matinee of Wicked) and tucked away so nicely down the bottom of the list? Idina Menzel. I swear, I was *this* close to bursting into tears, rotfl. This was after my friend and I had parted to go in our separate doors, and I had been lingering at the merchandise stand – once I saw Idina’s name I just bolted inside, dropped my stuff, and ran across the front to her seat to tell her because waiting until interval would have been impossible The concert itself was hellishly long (interval didn’t START until 10:20) but there were so many incredible people there, and it was awesome for something that had been put together in a very short amount of time. It was presented by the Wicked cast, and just had everyone there – the casts of Rent, Avenue Q, Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Light in the Piazza, Spelling Bee...many others...like, full casts too, not just a few people here and there. Bernadette Peters, Bebe of course, Julia Murney (*dies*), Idina in a gorgeous white dress who did an acoustic version of ‘I’ll Cover You’ from Rent and I can’t remember what else happened after her, rotfl. Megan Hilty though stole the show (after Idina, a long way after Idina) with the most hilarious performance of ‘Alto’s Lament’ ever.
27/09/05
Wicked
Gershwin Theatre, row B of the circle, slightly left of centre. Understudies for Fiyero and Nessarose (different understudy to last time!)
I said earlier I wanted understudies for everyone, but by the time it came to the end, I would have seriously wept had Megan Hilty been out. Fortunately, the Glinda stand-by is also the other Nessa understudy, so we were lucky enough to still see her, without losing Megan. Yay! So that brought the total Nessas seen to four, not bad. The first NY one was Michelle Federer who’s one of the few original cast members remaining, so it was just wonderful to be fortunate enough to see her
And no one yells out “it was Elphaba!” quite like Fed, rotfl. There’s also just a little personal ‘yay’ at being able to see an original cast member, and also that it was Michelle. The only two I’d have really liked to have seen would have been her or Idina. (If you’d asked me a month ago I’d have also said Kristin but that was before witnessing the gloriousness of Megan )I was also very pleased to see a Fiyero understudy because the NY Fiyero never quite cut it for me after the marvellousness of the tour one
And also, from up in the circle, he looked like Scott Irwin, so I liked him immediately because of that, and was able to forgive him when he went flat and then flubbed his lines a few times, rotfl. Anyway, the tour Fiyero (Derrick Williams) is black, and if you’ve read the book you’ll know Fiyero is dark-skinned, so pretty much every white Fiyero ever has irked me. I was so lucky that my first Fiyero looked how a Fiyero should look, so when the first NY one (David Ayers) came out – smarmy looking white git with big hair – I just went ‘ew, no’. And then, he spent the entire of ‘Dancing Through Life’ absolutely losing it, cracking up on every second line, and it totally won me over, so I loved him after that I still don’t like the characterisation of act 1 Fiyero though, and nothing is ever going to change that. But he’s more worthy in act 2 at least It was good to be up high again, because there’s a lot that you miss from being close – for one thing, when you’re in the stalls and can see the giant skirt billowing in ‘Defying Gravity’, it’s just nowhere near as enchanting as being up high when all you can see is her upper half, bathed in light – it makes you really believe she’s flying. And also the full effect of the Dragon watching over the stage, and the silhouettes of the flying monkeys once Elphaba has released them – that was one thing I noticed in SF that seemed missing in NY until I got to this last show and realised, well they were there all along, it’s just that when you’re down close, you have no reason to be looking directly up
I also had my copy of Son of a Witch (the sequel to the novel of Wicked) with me that performance because it had just been released that day, and it wouldn’t fit in my bag, so it ended up drawing a lot of attention from various audience members, the merchandise guy, Megan Hilty, rotfl.
So yeah, Wicked five times, Idina, and a few other things. So I’m content enough if it takes a year before I ever see Wicked again
Also, it’s actually really good. I mean, as a person who worships the book, who has read it so many times she can find a page reference in 11 seconds, who won’t go further than an hour from home without it; I’ve been picking apart the musical all year. I loved the songs straight off the bat, but there were so many aspects of the story that were changed that irked me. However, actually seeing it, as opposed to just reading the libretto and seeing/hearing small bits – it works. Now there’s still one or two things that will never sit with me, but I can’t totally shred it now. For one thing, the idea of Fiyero/Glinda always made me gag, but it’s not really that at all – she just likes him because he’s rich and good looking and has a reputation, which is something book Galinda would certainly do He, on the other hand, doesn’t really have any interest in her. Phew Oh and I love the playbills they give out in the US, they should do that here
Although I still ended up getting the big, glossy programmes as well because I'm quite a programme person. I got the Wicked one in SF (it's OBC so all the same) which was a good choice because the tour playbill doesn't have headshots, but the programme insert did. If anyone read more than a third of that, I'll give you a cookie
