ХРЮ!

An excellent musical by Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics) and Winnie Holzman (book).

We heard about this musical quite a while ago, and, as a part of his cunning plan, Waldemar decided invite me there. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we enjoyed the show immensely. I could probably say that we enjoyed everything - singing, music and even the plot! 

We knew that Wicked was somehow related to the Wizard of Oz and so we assumed that the plot is the same. But apparently it's completely the opposite! It is based on the book "Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the west" by Gregory Maguire. You can see a short summary (as well as history of the musical) here, I am too lazy to type it up here. But the plot turned out to be very clever and unexpected!

Musical score was excellent, with many strong entries. And as for the acting (not just singing, but precisely singing *and* acting)... It was amazing! Pretty much all of it! I would particularly like to mention Glinda (Dianne Pilkington), who was a perfect blonde, especially in the beginning (just think of the song "Popular" and her "Oh, hello" addressed to her reflection in a mirror); Nessarose (Caroline Keiff) who gave a very strong vocal performance and Fiyero (Oliver Tompsett), a silly (and handsome!) "prince charming".

But the star of the performance was, of course, the wonderful Kerry Ellis (playing the wicked witch, Elphaba). We already admired her in Chess where she had a rather small role. Here she had much more freedom (and words!) and she made good use of it. I hope it's not the last time we saw her!

We left the theatre feeling very happy and cheerful. We noticed a group of people standing near the back door and waiting for the actors. We weren't in a hurry, so decided to join them. I felt a bit silly at first - after all, it's mainly teenage girls who do such things. But the temptation was too great to resist. 

A few minutes later the door opened and a few actors (not the main ones) run out - apparently trying to catch their train (the theatre is located just opposite the Victoria station). That was quite amusing - you don't realise that all these people lead a normal life, do you? People kept coming out and finally one of the leading characters appeared - Oliver Tompsett (Fiyero). People (girls mainly) started screaming asking him for autographs. I was too embarrassed to ask him for a picture I am a married woman after all but didn't mind having his signature. So, I held out a program and my pen and guess what - the pen didn't work! You can see I wasn't too keen, can't you? Fortunately, a girl standing next too me lent me her pen (then and in all the consequentent cases I wanted to get somebody's signature).

All but one actors had already left and finally Kerry Ellis appeared (mind you, she had so much make up to remove!), took out *her own pen* and starting giving out autographs. Needless to say that I got one and that I also couldn't resist taking a picture with her.

(I think she had at least three cameras looking at her at this very moment so just kept turning her head here and back ;) Perfect ending of a perfect evening!

And here are a few more pictures from the event.