secondlina | Wicked review, Job review

I saw Wicked.

Totally worth the 80 $ I put in there.
And no, i'm not just saying that because i'm obessed by the wizard of oz.

The costumes and the set were awesome. I had a really good seat. I wanted to take a picture from my seat but picture's werent allowed (a person totally didn't listend and posted some on her flickr account - love the final bow). THis was played by the third tour cast. Nessarose was incredibly beautiful (played by DeeDee Magno Hall - who is actually married to the actor who was playing Fiero), Elphaba was pretty awesome, though she would shriek a lot, which Menzel (of the original cast) didn't do, but it suits the witch part. The fact that I loved the most was that this elphaba was a bit bulkier and shorter then say Menzel or the actress who played Glinda, which accentuated the blond versus green joke. Glinda was incredibly beautiful as well. Her voice was a lot less high pitched then Chenoweth (original Glinda) but she was more into physical comedy (actions such as giggling, jumping around and jumping from side to side were frequent) and had a very sad and regal image of Glinda the Good to propose. Fiero was funny.

In the play versus the book, well, the play is much less serious. It's actually completly un-serious. It reminds you a lot of the MGM oz movie in how the comic outweights the tragic and how the tragic is mostly communicated through the character's emotions rather then the plot. However, the play proposes a lot of chronological gaps with the general Oz books, such as the fact that Elphaba doesn't die and that the scarecrow (who is in fact Fiero transformed) leaves Oz with her forever. Mr. Scarecrow, being the future leader of the munchkins, really can't leave. But despite those odd elements, I was happy to see Elphaba survive her bucket.

I think that if a movie of Wicked was to be made (there's talk of it) they would really have to mix the play and the book. THe book is just TOO serious and complicated. Kinda far from Oz a bit. And Maguire made Dorothy into a ditz, which goes against the powerful and independant image Frank Baum wanted of her (wuss dorothy is a pure invention of MGM studios). And the play is well, not serious enough. And though I love Elphaba, I think it would serve well for her to actually perish, because it's part of her character's tragedy. Simply having her survive is like saying " Well, you suffered, but look, by faking your death you can now escape and all you have fought for, you never have to think about again, yay you!"

I,m still not a big fan of Wicked (book) though I admire some of Maguire's ideas, it seems to me he dropped a lot of the childhood themes available in Oz. I would not enjoy a movie followed the books to the letter. It would not be Oz. I really like Disney's version of Oz (explored in "return to Oz") where Oz is seen more as a fantasy land like in Labyrinth. The idea mixes serious and comical well.

Oh, I also got a JOB!

Bad point of the job (kinda) is it's location; Ottawa. I took it anyhow, because it's a fantastic job. I would lear a lot and be happy in it. I'm sad that i'll be in a long distance relationship for yet another year... But I've survived up to now and Link supports me and that's pretty awesome. I still have to move though; the job is far too deep in Ottawa for me to manage to reach it from Aylmer (not unless I want to bus 2h30 hours every morning until I can drive, then I can drive 45 minutes. Yay.) But I only start on the 22nd of september, so i've got time to find one.

Therefore my job quest was replaced by my quest for an appartment. If anyone reading this knows of appartments in Ottawa or people needing roomies in Ottawa, lemme know!!!!!

-Isa