I loved it. The two leads were so entertaining. Julia has quite the voice, and Kendra was a crack-up. I pretty much have a yen for anything that riffs off Wizard of Oz, and this didn't let me down in that area.
I liked it so much better than the book. The story cries out for the light touch, the fun, the music that the Broadway treatment gives it. The only area I felt a little shortchanged with was the streamlining of the second act ... where pretty much the entire story was streamlined
out.
And, in what I have to assume was a take-no-risks move, the character of Elphaba was never allowed to become one tiny bit unsympathetic. Despite most of the causes being present, she never became bitter ... much less actually wicked. And so, alas, I never found that connection with the WWotW that, by the end of the story, she is supposed to become.
The play, instead, had the WW be merely a propagandistic repulation that Elphie never really inhabits. As such, the illusion that this was the "untold, behind-the-scenes" story was never achieved for me ... and it came off instead as some kind of alternate Oz universe where everything was topsy-turvy simply for the sake of being completely opposite of all that we "knew."
Still, on its own terms, the show was completely entertaining, and I enjoyed it thoroughly enough to want to see it again when it returns to the Pantages next year. This was actually the first of the big hit musicals that I haven't been realy disappointed with.
Heheh, that's high iSm praise!
