Something wicked this way comes

Big-time Broadway production Wicked comes to the NAC

Musicals are stupid. And I mean that in a glorious, beautiful, massive, transcendent way. They are coarse, unrefined torrents of emotion that clutch at you with powerful moments of inspiration. Sometimes they overreach and become ridiculous with the effort of forcing moments (there’s actually a song in the musical Jekyll & Hyde called This Is the Moment – it’s an awful, sticky mess). But we love it because the musical remains unashamed and proud, bearing its pennants high and parading for all it’s worth. And because when it works, it works like nothing else in this world.

The North American tour of Wicked began in Toronto in 2005, under Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello, and rapidly smashed its way to the absolute forefront of theatrical popularity. I had the delight of box seats for a Toronto performance a while ago. It was absolutely every bit what I had hoped, and the show remains a favoured memory. The sets were gilded and gigantic, filling the entire proscenium. Glinda the Good Witch descended on a tremendous arm, a literal deus ex machine, and later the same trick hoisted the heroine Elphaba the Wicked Witch to triumphant height. The music is rich and beautifully worked, only dragging slightly at the very beginning.

But the real power in this show is held by the two antipodean witches, and the actors cast in the role are invariably pillars of performance – by turns funny and clownish, girlishly innocent, or beautiful and valiant. It is their bond not just as characters in the play, but more importantly as performers, that drives the entire show.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Katie Rose Clarke, who joined the touring company last November in the part of Glinda. “My favourite thing is connecting with another actor on stage, to be in tune with another person. And I have an amazing Elphaba [Carmen Cusack] to work with.” She seemed infectiously excited about the show: “No matter how many times we perform, the emotion is always real.”

It’s a simple statement. And so we want it, and love it, and celebrate it. We need to be simple sometimes. Every life is Gordian in complexity, and sometimes we want to feel unknotted and straightforward. Musicals allow us that rare pleasure as not many other things can.

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Aug 07, 2008
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=15256