Last night I went to Wicked the Musical to celebrate Jess's birthday. I don't know if you know this but since moving to England I have been a West End performance critique. I'm not sure if i've really known it until the last couple of performances. I would say that the production I saw was about 3/5 stars. It is a great story which gives it a good start with me. The musical ties in quite nicely to the beginning of the Wizard of Oz and shows where the characters Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man orginate from. Although it was not written by the same person I feel that it kept true to the feel of the Wizard of Oz. So by now you are probably thinking well why didn't it get more stars with you Melissa.
Well here are the reasons:
- the sound production wasn't up to standard
- the music wasn't catchy and didn't "feel" right
- it was very American (not surprising since it was written in America)
At some points it was very hard to hear the words over the orchestra. The music in a musical needs to make you feel that it was added in because of emotion but also needs to be catch enough to make you want to sing it long after the show was over but also there were no big chorus dancing/singing songs really. I say it was very American because it was I can't really describe it but here are a few examples... the jokes were quite obvious and for European especially British shows the jokes are subtle, a lot of the songs were sung arms stretched out in a look at me fashion.
Don't get me wrong it was still good and I didn't want to get up half way through the performance but it just didn't enthrall me like musicals usually do. So that's that.
Micky
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