No One Mourns The Wicked

Good News. She's Dead. The Witch of the West is dead! The wickedest witch there ever was, the enemy of all of us here in Oz, is DEAD!

We all know the story, Dorothy comes along, follows a Yellow Brick Road, finds a man made of tin, a cowardly lion, an irritatingly happy fairy, and a cacklingly green witch. She finds some ruby slippers, tells the wizard he is a moron, and tells the world there is no place like home. See, we all know the story... But what happened before Dorothy came along? What happened that made the nasty Wicked Witch of the West so wicked? Enter stage right (or was that through the front door of London's Apollo Victoria Theatre?), and be taken to Munchkinland of the pre-Dot time, and meet Glinda and Elphaba, Wicked's witches of Oz!

Wicked opened on Broadway in October 2003, and has gone on to become the New Musical of the World with long-running productions having been staged in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Osaka, Stuttgart, Melbourne and San Francisco. It grosses over $1m a week on Broadway, and has won itself loads of awards along the way.

So what makes Wicked so brilliant? By taking such a well known story, turning back the time and explaining the back-story to why the witches are the way they are makes way for a plot of creativity. Blend with it a couldron full of colourful sets, amazing special effects, driving music and some of the most horrifically difficult songs to sing, and you have a showstopping success!

Smothered in layers of green make-up, Elphaba was played by Kerry Ellis, an actress who brought so much justice to the character with the strongest voice I have heard in a very long time. The end of Act One finishes with the song Defying Gravity, which, I suspect, was originally titled Defying Vocality, as some of the notes that Elphie must hit are extraordinarily high, followed by the some of the lowest depths that shouldn't be acheivable by a lady!

Get your skates on folks, grab your broomsticks, greenify yourselves and immerse yourself in the Land of Oz, you will be changed For Good!