Quote Originally Posted by jjoseph
I'm green with jealousy that you're getting to go to the musical. Book rocked. Great treatment of 'what is it to be evil' vs. what is it to be perceived as such. No hard line. No easy answers. Good stuff. Hope the musical treats the material so well.

A lot of the book is set in a pseudo-british Victorian/Edwardian kind of culture with feudal and tribal fringes. A kilt would go well for some of the male characters at Elphaba's school I think.
Yah...well...I bought the book (I actually have a first edition!) for my wife since I thought that the idea of looking at the story from the witches point of view would be worthwhile. I've seen a lot of folks who have been categorized as, let's say, less-than-good and have found that many of them are more honest and upright than a lot of the goody-goody types that I've met. Let's face it; to the Dragon, St. George was a home invader. The "other-side-of-the-story" device has been used quite a bit lately; "Wicked" may be one of the best examples of it.

There is a BIG difference between the book and the play, apparently...I haven't had the time to read the book myself but, when my wife finished it, she mentioned that there were some very "unsavory" aspects to the story and particularly to the Wizard's personality. I read a "blog" recently wherein the writer really slammed the musical for being a real "Disney-fied" version of the book. Since the theatres are packed with high school girls who "identify strenuously" with the Glinda and Elphaba characters, you gotta figure that the story has been "sanitized for your protection". What is there is really pretty good, though...the folks in the performance that I saw didn't seem to be able to get the real tragedy and triumph across...they just didn't build much sympathy for the characters...it was there in the script but they just couldn't seem to make the characters human enough. The show depends A LOT on special effects...more of the "Disney" aspect...and a "soundtrack" that's really heavy on driving synthesizer parts (bloody annoying at times). I hope that someday there's a more laid back production of it (with less synthesizer!) where they an concentrate more on the characters and less on the Gee-Whiz of the whole thing...it's a very worthwhile story.

Be thus forewarned it you get a chance to go see it...last time I looked, it was playing in about twelve cities in North America! Do you know how to say "franchise"? Ca-ching!

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