Wicked

My Zwinky in my sidebar should help explain my big-day yesterday...

Abby and I went to NY to see "Wicked" on broadway. We took a bus trip up there, so we didnt need to worry about driving ourselves. It was great. we had a wonderful time. i'll explain to you the main themes of the play... Abby read the book and said that it was quite different at points than the play. But i'll explain the way the show went, not the book...

Elphaba is the "wicked witch of the west." though it starts when she went away to a boarding school, way before this whole "wicked" thing started. People didnt like her, however, b/c she's green. It freaked them out. She went there w/ her sister, who is stuck in a wheelchair; the only reason Elphaba went was to take care of her sister. [Their father doesnt like Elphaba at all. he's also freaked out by her.]

Well, there's a really popular, but extremely ditzy and shallow girl, at the school named Galinda. [she becomes glinda the good witch]. They are forced to room together. They HATE eachother at the beginning.

But they eventually become friends... best friends.

There's a bit of a problem... A boy shows up to school. Galinda falls for him and determines to marry him someday. But Elphaba also starts to like him... And surprisingly, he starts to like her too. though, they hide their feelings from eachother and others.

Elphaba gets an opportunity to meet the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She brings Galinda w/ her. [Who has changed her name by this point to Glinda]. The wizard gives Elphaba a task to test her powers. She causes a bunch of monkeys to grow wings. He says he's gonna use them as spies... They discover that the Wizard has no powers at all. Plus, he's hiding a big conspiracy. [in oz, animals can talk. but he's capturing and caging them all so that they never learn how to. His reason is that to unify Oz, they all need a common enemy, so he chooses the animals.] Elphaba is furious; she steals his book of spells and runs away. Glinda catches up to her. Glinda decides to stay behind [she likes the popularity that will come thru being aligned w/ the wizard] but Elphaba flies away on a broom stick.

Some time passes. Everyone is searching for "the wicked witch." The Wizard had spread rumors that she was a wicked, vile person b/c he wants her caught so no one listens to her insisting that he's the evil one. Glinda announces her engagement to the guy [i think his name is Fiaro], which takes him by huge surprise. Elphaba appears, though first to the Wizard. She wants to see if he's changed, and she wants him to free the monkeys. He does free the monkeys, but she sees that he's hasnt changed. He calls the guards in... and Fiaro is one of them. He decides to run away w/ her b/c he really does love her.

Glinda is really hurt. She cant believe that her best friend has done this to her. So when the wizard is trying to figure out how to get them out of hiding, she says to spread rumor that something bad has happened to the sister. ... Unbenonced to her, the wizard decides to actually kill the sister. His assistant summons up a huge storm, a tornado that brings a house flying into the land of Oz. [Hence, dorothy and her little dog Todo.] Elphaba is furious [and she wants her sister's shoes... they had been a gift from the father]. She and Fiaro both show up... Glinda swears that she didnt know the wizard would hurt the sister. Guards show up and capture Fiaro and kill him.

Elphaba flies off to her castle w/ her monkeys. She does capture Dorothy, but just b/c she wants the shoes back... which dorothy refuses to do. Glinda comes to warn her that people are coming to kill her. Elphaba is resigned to dying, but asks Glinda to carry on to make things better. Dorothy and others get thru to pour a bucket of water on the witch, melting her dead.

Glinda returns to the Emerald city. She banishes the wizard from Oz. She takes over control of the country, to lead them all in a better direction.

And at the very end, Fiaro and Elphaba didnt really die. They just made it appear that they did. But they had to run away into hiding so that no one would ever know that they were still alive.

I really loved it. The main theme really was friendship. And that was so nice to see the power and strength of friendship, willing to forgive and stay close.