The national tour of WICKED is set to land on the Civic Center’s Crouse-Hinds Theater’s stage for a three week engagement beginning January 13 to 31.

The show will also feature a “monster-size dragon with the wingspan of a Cessna 172 plane zipping around the stage” as reported in a story in Syracuse.com.

WICKED plays the Civic Center’s Crouse-Hinds Theatre from January 13 to 31, located at 411 Montgomery Street in Syracuse. For tickets and more information, please visit Ticketmaster.

The story on stage plucks its outline loosely from the dark book by Gregory Maguire, “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” which was published in 1995. Writer Winnie Holzman and composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz took it from there and delivered the musical on Broadway in 2003. It went on to win three Tony Awards.

WICKED has “cast quite a spell” (Washington Post) throughout North America, breaking box office records in every city that it has played, including Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Philadelphia and Boston to name a few. Called “a cultural phenomenon” by Variety and “the best musical of the decade” by Entertainment Weekly, WICKED continues to thrill audiences around the world. There are currently eight productions of WICKED worldwide, including two North American tours, a Broadway production, San Francisco production, London production, a Japanese-language production, a German-language production and an Australian production. A Dutch-language production of WICKED will open in 2011.

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BroadwayWorld just announced that Wicked’s production at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre just enjoyed its highest grossing year to date – grossing £27,333,991 at the Box Office up 100,000 from last year (2008). The musical, which was named “Best Musical of the Decade” by Entertainment Weekly has grossed over £90 million at the UK Box Office since premiering in London in September 2006. The production celebrated 1,000 performance in February last year and 2 million customers in May 2009.

The women of Wicked in the UK – Dianne Pilkington and Alexia Khadime – were honored as Women of the Future at the annual Woman of the Future Awards. The production has been ’short-listed’ as Best West End Show by theatergoers voting online through the end of the month, at Whatsonstage.com (http://awards.whatsonstage.com). ”The public’s incredible enthusiasm and support for Wicked has swept us along on a huge wave of success since we opened in 2006. To see our business continuing to climb year-on-year is really incredible and we are enormously grateful to the millions of people who have bought tickets to date and especially to those who made 2009 our best year yet,” UK Executive Producer Michael McCabe said.

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“Wicked” opens at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in Philadelphia on Wednesday (Playing January 6 to January 24, 2010), so if you haven’t seen the play that the New York Times has called “Broadway’s biggest blockbuster,” what are you waiting for? The show follows the story written by Gregory Maguire, of two classmates (and roommates) who end up becoming the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch in the film and story by L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz.” The play itself has won 26 major awards including three TOny Awards and a Grammy, and even earned the original Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) a Tony Award for Best Actress the year it premiere (Idina Menzel). “Wicked has every piece of the Great American Musical, and even defines the genre in the current evolution. It is although thrillifying,” wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer. “If every musical had the brain, the heart and the courage of ‘Wicked,’ Broadway really would be a magical place,” said Time Magazine. “Remember the last time an original Broadway musical made you laugh, cry and think – in the right places and for the right reasons? ‘Wicked’ is the most complete, and completely satisfying, new musical I’ve come across in a long time. It’s a triumph!” wrote USA Today.

Get Wicked tickets from WickedTheMusicalTicketsOnline.com .

WICKED Breaks Its Own Box Office Record To Become The Highest Grossing Show In Broadway History

For the third time in just six weeks, the Broadway smash WICKED has grossed over $2 million for one week of performances. For the week ending Sunday, November 29, the musical, now in its 7th year, grossed $2,086,135, and for the week ending December 27, the musical surpassed its own record, grossing $2,092,745. For the week ending January 3, 2010, the musical shattered the record once again, making Broadway history by taking in an unprecedented $2,125,740 and setting a new house record at the Gershwin Theatre.

Below are the Top 10 Grosses from BroadwayWorld.com for the week ending January 3, 2010.

Wicked $2,125,740
The Lion King $1,740,130
Billy Elliot: The Musical $1,663,895
West Side Story $1,485,158
Jersey Boys $1,440,456
Shrek The Musical $1,387,182
The Phantom of the Opera $1,374,875
Mary Poppins $1,323,699
Mama Mia! $1,315,354
HAIR $1,121,847

Additionally, the show’s three other North American productions broke house records in San Francisco ($1,485,692), Providence ($1,793,764), and Schenectady ($1,657,139), bringing the musical’s one-week North American box office gross to $7,062,335.

The musical, which was recently called “the defining musical of the decade” by The New York Times, currently has eight productions across the globe: in New York, San Francisco, London, Stuttgart, Osaka, Sydney, and on two concurrent North American National Tours. WICKED has amassed over $1.7 billion globally in ticket sales and has been seen by over 21 million people worldwide in its 7-year history.

Winner of 26 major awards including the Grammy Award and three Tony Awards, WICKED is the untold story of the witches of Oz. Long before Dorothy drops in, two other girls meet in the land of Oz. One, born with emerald-green skin, is smart, fiery and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very popular. WICKED tells the story of their remarkable odyssey, how these two unlikely friends grow to become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.

Declared “The Best Musical of the Decade” by Entertainment Weekly and “A Cultural Phenomenon” by Variety, WICKED is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, has music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and a book by Winnie Holzman. The production is directed by Joe Mantello with musical staging by Wayne Cilento. WICKED is produced by Marc Platt, Universal Pictures, The Araca Group, Jon B. Platt and David Stone.

The musical currently stars Dee Roscioli as Elphaba, Erin Mackey as Glinda, Kevin Kern as Fiyero, Rondi Reed as Madame Morrible, P.J. Benjamin as The Wizard, Alex Brightman as Boq, Michelle Federer as Nessarose, and Timothy Britten Parker as Dr. Dillamond.

Find Great Seats for best prices through WickedTheMusicalTicketsOnline.com. For more information, visit www.wickedthemusical.com. WICKED is performing at the Gershwin Theatre, 222 West 51st Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue.

Wicked remains one of Broadway’s most popular musicals, and features some of the most creative storytelling on Broadway. Taking its cue from the novel by Gregory Maguire, the Broadway musical re-invents the familiar world of Oz (as in Dorothy and The Wizard). Wicked is really the story about the relationship between two young women who will grow up to become Glinda The Good Witch, called Galinda Upland, and the Wicked Witch of The West, known in the musical as Elphaba. While this is a clever premise in itself, the musical goes a step further by not only entertaining, but also getting the audience to reconsider long-held beliefs about these two mythic figures. Young or old, we all know where the story of where these witches will end up, and that makes this musical all the more rewarding for showing us how it might have begun. What makes Wicked such a tremendous Broadway success is that it is a genuinely engaging story, exceptionally entertaining for adults as well as children. In addition to this, Wicked is actually thought-provoking, in the best way possible.

With award-winning costumes by Susan Hilferty, and scenic design by Eugene Lee, the show successfully re-introduces us in a fresh way to once-familiar characters, and a fictional world that most audiences have an association with today. The unique story of Wicked and its fresh perspective is echoed in the music and lyrics of Stephen Schwartz , which ring out with imagination and a pop-sensibility. As a Broadway musical, Wicked offers a tremendous assortment of interesting characters, creative and imaginative ideas, captivating visual effects, and uniquely dramatic moments. It isn’t easy being green, just ask Elphaba, and Wicked actually succeeds in getting us to care about these characters in an entirely different way. To say that Wicked is Broadway magic is absolutely cliche, but that word “magic” is also absolutely appropriate given this Broadway musical’s ability to tell a story that truly touches the heart, dazzles the eye, delights the ear, and stirs the mind. Magic, yes indeed. Though it may not be for the very young, for those 8 and above.or 108 and below, the show is perfect Broadway magic that you will not forget.