Wow Jazz... I felt the opposite. Perhaps because I read the book first, but I was annoyed at how much the musical left out. I mean, obviously you have to leave out a lot, but to make the Time Dragon part of the set and then NEVER address its significance blew my mind.

Looking back, I can certainly agree there. (Totally awesome set piece, too.) The book, though, was just written so poorly that it felt like someone came up with a fantastic story idea and then handed it to a seventh grader to write. It was just painful, and I only finished it after forcing myself to read two chapters before bed every night. Thank Zeus the chapters followed the current short-attention-span-three-page-chapter formatting trend. Any longer and I may have offed myself.

Glad you liked it, though! :D

This will make more sense to Nephy once she's seen the show... (and it's a good chuckle, too!) :D

ROTFLMAO OMG...Lash that is HILARIOUS!

-oh, and Rose and I plan to be Glinda and Elphaba for Halloween.

Guess which one I am gonna be?

You do realize that requires photos to be available right? Follow their lead and find a green long sleeved top to save some of the paint!

Photos are a given.

She had green sleeves on?

I am planning to do this costume-so only my hands and face would need to be green anyway.

I don't think the writing style of the book was great by any stretch, but the musical basically chucked the entire story and just left the barest set-up as its entire plot.

This wouldn't have been so bad if I perceived barely anything happening in the 2nd act, but was pretty baren of plot. I love the songs, the costumes, the characters ... but I hate that it's a tenth of the story instead of the customary musical adaptation of maybe half the story.


I hate it even more because reading the book is such a dreadful chore. It would have been nice to have the musical be a reasonable re-telling of the interesting story. But that's emphatically NOT the case.


Good songs though.

I have to agree on the play vs the book, I hadn't read the book before seeing the play either time, Lash and Stoat were oh you have to read the book, so we did....and I had a HARD time 'getting into the book' because it's so dark and far from the play 'storyline' I finally had to put it down and 'walk away' from it for a week and get my head into a 'it's only the same title with a few overlaping character names to be able to go back and really engage in the story presented in the book(s) the books are so much darker it's hard to describe but if you can seperate the two then you'll enjoy both.

The thing that bugs me the most about the difference is that the book at least attempts to explain how Elphaba, the delightful, simply misunderstood character of the musical and part of the book, actually becomes the Wicked Witch of the West as we all know her.

The musical merely presents her as completely misunderstood, good to the end, and posits that the Wizard of Oz had it all wrong.


To my mind, this is an unforgiveable cheat.


I guess it could be called a "reboot" in modern terminology. But it doesn't work for me.



Good songs, tho. But since it conflicts directly with that other musical - ya know, the one from 1939 - I can't even say it's the best Oz musical.

Yet, I enjoyed it. Twice. Fine show. Deplorable story.