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There
was a good deal of buzz about Wicked during
the summer of 2004. Both Sarah Davis and Amanda Cohen heartily recommended
I listen to the score and do the show the following year, Amanda of course
because she had designs on playing Elphaba. I had actually gotten a free CD
containing a couple of songs from Wicked
when I bought the CD of Little
Shop of Horrors at the Virgin Megastore, but hadn’t listened to
it yet; when I did I certainly liked what I heard. The show had gotten
lukewarm reviews when it opened on Broadway, but was apparently a box
office hit and very popular with
the kids.
I had
been aware of Gregory Maguire’s original novel, a biography of the
Wicked Witch of the West, but I had never actually read it so I
didn’t know the details of the story. I managed to get a ticket to
see the Broadway show around Halloween 2004, when original cast member
(and, as I later discovered, Pontiac alumna) Idina Menzel was still in it.
I thought it was exceptional; wonderful songs, interesting story, and just
enough references to The Wizard of Oz
to provide comic relief without lapsing into parody. It was a clear
choice for the 2005 upper camp show.
The
sheet music book had most of the
music, but not all of it, and the songs had been re-arranged as solos, so I
had to figure out some of the score by ear. My internet source, thankfully,
had the script, so I could get the bulk of the dialogue from there. As I
was working on the script, however, I found that it was running very, very
long, with a great deal more dialogue than I really wanted. The story is
actually very complicated and somewhat difficult to follow if you’re
not paying close attention, and the exposition of the central conflict is
provided in dialogue rather than song. There was just too much. I ended up
having to excise the Dr. Dillamond character, although I did so very
reluctantly because I had a particular camper in mind for the part, and
limit the Wizard’s evil scheme to using the flying monkeys as spies,
leaving out the broader plot involving all the anthropomorphic animals of
Oz. I also had to leave out much of the burgeoning romance between Elphaba
and Fiyero, leaving the audience to figure out for themselves how it
happened. I had to make other cuts and adjustments as well, to get the
script to a manageable length. In the end, I think this was the hardest
show to cut, after Les Misérables, without losing significant parts
of the plot or having it unravel altogether.
Another
major challenge which this show represented was the broad variety of
locations and backdrops seen in the Broadway show. In many cases the
background and location were important to the scene (for example, the scene
in Munchkinland where Glinda and Elphaba have the catfight over Fiyero and
the death of Nessarose, a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the East). Since we did
not have the technical capacity or resources for multiple backdrops, and
unlike, say, Aida
or Tommy,
there was really no one single background image that would support the entire
show, plus we were still forbidden to paint on the stage anyway, I
essentially ran out of ideas and decided to use the plain black backdrop
again, leaving the scenery to the audience’s imagination. In
retrospect, I think I probably could have done more with it, and I wish I
had, but for some reason I didn’t.
In
some respects, in 2005 and particularly on this show, I found working in
the new theatre to be somewhat frustrating. As magnificent as the new
facility was, and given the vast improvement of many aspects of the new
stage over the old, there were some serious limitations to the new stage
that in some cases proved insurmountable. The lighting system provided much
greater versatility and control than the old, but still employed only
ordinary incandescent and floodlight bulbs, thus providing woefully
inadequate candlepower, particularly to the back corners of the stage. The
forestage was nearly three times as wide as the one in the old theatre, but
the doors on either side did not open onto the stage itself, leaving the
edges of the curtain as the only means of ingress and egress to the
forestage with the curtain closed. Speaking of which, the curtain
wouldn’t close all the way, leaving a gap in the center which we
couldn’t find a way to fix until the following year.
In
addition, not only could I no longer paint and hammer and staple and cut
and build and attach and alter the set to my heart’s content, I really
couldn’t do anything with the protruding enclosure which had been
built onto the back wall. It was too narrow and too low for anyone but the
smallest kids to move about inside, and the center opening was too low to
install a door, let alone effectively use it for entrances and exits. Yet
the structure was also too high,
and again too narrow, for anyone to walk on top of it without hitting his head on the low ceiling, or
the air-conditioning unit mounted conspicuously above center stage, let
alone without having his face obscured by the proscenium arch. There were also
no steps or ladders on either side to facilitate anyone’s climbing up
there. Somehow, it had been designed and built with the absolute worst
possible dimensions. I couldn’t even create a mural backdrop with
this thing covering the whole bottom half of the wall. It was, in a word,
useless.
I
wanted to do something on this show that we had never even attempted
before: rig a flying harness for Elphaba to perform the end of
“Defying Gravity.” I asked Jimbo and the climbing staff if they
could help, and they said they probably could. But as I was inspecting the
stage after Mamma Mia! I looked
up at the ceiling to try to figure out where we could mount the
rope-and-pulley system, and how we could get the actress into the harness
during the scene. I walked around a few times, went down to the floor of
the auditorium to look at sight angles, stood on stage right behind the curtain line under the proscenium arch, and came to a dismayed realization. With the ceiling
only 11 feet above the stage, and the top of the proscenium arch about three feet below that, there was no place to hang the
rope-and-pulley system where the audience couldn’t see it. Anything
we did install would only be able to lift the actress about two feet off the
floor, at the most. The ceiling was just too low. There was no way we could do
it.
We
still needed to have Elphaba above the stage for the end of that song, but
the best (and only) solution we could come up with was to have her climb up
to the top of the upstage structure and do it from there. Unfortunately, as
mentioned above there were no steps or ladder, so we had to pile up some
furniture next to the end of the structure and have the stage crew help her
up. We also couldn’t have her stand
up there because her head was blocked by the proscenium arch (which also
blocked the spotlight beam) for anyone not sitting in the first 10 or 12
rows. We had to have her kneel on one knee with the broomstick in one hand, a sufficient but somewhat awkward-looking pose given the dramatic importance of the scene and Amanda's powerful singing.
Perhaps
it was overly ambitious for us to attempt to do a show which in its
original form relies so heavily on special effects, on a brand-new stage
which was not particularly well-designed to begin with and had not really
been put through its paces. We did manage to create several impressive
special effects, including using fishing line to "magically" move Nessarose’s
wheelchair in the Shiz arrival scene, multi-colored lights and echo effects
for the introduction of the Wizard, and a clever means of having Christery
sprout wings (although that worked better in rehearsal than it did in the
final show). And of course, without special effects, the performances of
the cast became that much more important, and as always, they did not
disappoint.
All
three female leads were perfect for their respective roles. Amanda, of
course, got the role she had coveted and played a marvelous wicked witch
Elphaba; Bryanna Mazzella was ideal for good witch Glinda (known as Galinda
until the second act); and Kacie Friedman was a lovely and convincing
Nessarose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-bound sister. Ariana Gould, new to
the theatre, played Madame Morrible, the conniving schoolmistress. On the
boys’ side, Milan Lipstein simply blew us away with his audition; he
had become an exceptional singer since performing in Aida the year before. He was an
obvious choice for the heroic prince Fiyero, as was Brian Leigh for the
earnest but hapless Wizard of Oz, while the always reliable and talented
Mark Hartenstein took the role of Boq, the heartsick munchkin. Remembering
his talent show act from his freshman summer, I recruited Aaron Feld to
play the monkey Christery; he had never done a show before but had such a
good time he came back the next year and landed a major role in Spamalot. The
ensemble consisted largely of theatre veterans from the inter, junior and
subbie divisions, although we had a few interesting new talents.
The
performances on stage more than made up for the show’s technical
shortcomings; in a way, this was the anti-Lion King. The audience really seemed
to love it. We even had Amanda and Bryanna perform “For Good”
on the last night of camp. Wicked
was an excellent show, and a fine way to wrap up the first season in the new theatre.
______
Pontiac Players present
WICKED
Music and Lyrics by STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
Book by WINNIE HOLZMAN
Based on the novel by GREGORY MAGUIRE
Principal Cast
AMANDA COHEN as Elphaba
BRYANNA MAZZELLA as Glinda/Galinda
MILAN LIPSTEIN as Fiyero
BRIAN LEIGH as the Wizard
MARK HARTENSTEIN as Boq
KACIE FRIEDMAN as Nessarose
ARIANA GOULD as Mme Morrible
AARON FELD as Christery
Directed by JAY BRAIMAN and JENNY BALES
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