Wicked Musical opens at Miller Wednesday December 01, 2010 and runs through Sunday, December 12, 2010.

Crews assemble the set for “Wicked” on the stage of Miller Auditorium on Tuesday

Assistant sound engineer Anthony Jones, of Brooklyn, N.Y., assembles sound equipment for the Broadway musical Wicked at Miller Auditorium. Some 90 local electricians, carpenters, laborers and others were hired to work with the 18 professionals who travel with the show.

Buy your Wicked Miller Auditorium Tickets now!

The Toronto Star’s Richard Ouzounian reports that the show, which just finished its third Toronto run, set the record for highest-earning week in Canadian theatre, grossing $1,986,319 for the week of November 28.

During the week that ended Nov. 28, the show grossed $1,986,319, making it the highest-earning week for a show in Canadian theatre history.

Over the course of the six weeks that Wicked played Toronto this time around, it took in a total of $11,459,475, breaking its own house record at the Canon Theatre five times.

Since opening in 2003, the show written by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman from the novel by Gregory Maguire has grossed $2 billion and played to 25 million people around the world.

Producer David Stone has previously gone on record as saying, “Toronto is one of our favourite cities to play.” There is no indication when, or if, a fourth edition of Wicked will be seen in Toronto.

Wicked is currently playing in Cadillac Palace Theatre, Chicago IL and Miller Auditorium – Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI.

Stephen Schwartz said he doesn’t know for certain why “Wicked,” for which he’s both composer and lyricist, has become such a long-running phenomenon. The musical, which opened on Broadway in 2003, will perform its magic Dec. 1-12 at Miller Auditorium.

Schwartz spoke about “Wicked” and his career while in Kalamazoo in August, when he also gave a talk at the Kalamazoo Civic Auditorium, ahead of its September performance of “Godspell,” and sneaked in a few matches at the U.S. Tennis Association Boys’ National Championship.

“I get these wonderful e-mails, especially from women going through difficult stages of their lives,” Schwartz said. The messages are from people who saw “Wicked,” often more than once, and found the musical “seems to speak to them.”

The song “Defying Gravity,” in particular, inspired them to confront their challenges and take action.

“Wicked,” a tale of two witches in Oz before Dorothy of Kansas showed up, is about the “difference between our perception of people and the reality,” Schwartz said. “So much today is blogs and things taken out of context, us versus them. Life is really not that simple.”

But basically “Wicked” is “the story of these two people.”

“It’s about the relationship between two friends, how another person can change your life,” he explained. “That’s a story not very often told in musical theater, and not so much with women.”

“As our leading producer, David Stone, says, ‘All of us has that green girl inside of us,’” Schwartz said.

What first attracted Schwartz, who studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School of Music and graduated in 1968 from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.F.A. in drama, to this story?

Choosing his projects, he admitted with a grin, often “is like falling in love” — a lot of it is chance. In the case of “Wicked,” he recalled he was on a snorkeling vacation in Hawaii when a friend mentioned she was reading Gregory Maguire’s novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.”

The coming year will be “very busy” for the composer. Fresh after being honored this summer by the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project for his mentorship of young tunesmiths, Schwartz has turned his attention to a Chicago revival of “Working” (1978), which will boast two new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda of the Tony Award-winning show “In the Heights,” and an opera.

Of his career thus far, he noted, “Even shows that I had trouble with at first” — “The Baker’s Wife,” “Children of Eden,” “Working,” for example — “they haven’t just gone away. People remained interested in them” and they continue to be produced.
“I’ve been very, very lucky.”

Wicked in Kalamazoo, MI
Miller Auditorium presents musical about the complicated and doomed friendship between the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch.

When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1-2, 7-9; 8 p.m. Dec. 3-4, 10-11; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Dec. 5 and 12; 2 p.m. Dec. 2, 4 and 11

Where: Miller Auditorium, Western Michigan University

Buy Wicked Kalamazoo MI Tickets Online

Wicked is coming to the Cadillac Palace Theatre, not the Oriental, its former Chicago home. Wicked has a large and loyal contingent of Chicago fans.

Wicked played in Chicago for 3 and 1/2 years before, is now returning to Chicago Cadillac Palace for an almost two-month run during the holidays.

Actress Jackie Burns (left) plays a young Wicked Witch of the West opposite Chandra Lee Schwartz as a novice Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in the national Broadway tour of Wicked playing a Chicago holiday run Dec. 1 to Jan. 23, 2011.

This return Broadway in Chicago engagement of “Wicked” also includes the return of two Chicagoan stars, Barbara Robertson, joining the cast as treacherous teacher Madame Morrible, and Gene Weygandt as the Wizard of Oz.

Wicked holds the magical distinction of being the longest-running show in Chicago history. For this season’s return, it’s playing at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph, for eight weeks, opening Dec. 1 and running through Jan. 23, 2011.

Buy Wicked Tickets Chicago Online.

Wicked will be performing at Miller Auditorium Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI Wedneasday, Dec 01 through Sunday, Dec 12, 2010.

The show has been selling well, with some of the weekend shows nearly sold out and the best seats still available for weeknight performances, said Bethany Gauthier, assistant director of marketing for Miller.

Purchase Wicked Miller Auditorium – Western Michigan University Tickets online.

“Wicked,” a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” performing 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 28, Tulsa Performing Arts Center, 110 E. 2nd St.

Wicked will be closing this sunday night, Only last two days in Tulsa, OK. Will will then be moving to Miller Auditorium – Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI.

Hurry up for Wicked Tulsa OK Tickets.

Mark Evans will join the cast of Wicked in the role of ‘Fiyero’, from Monday 7 Feb 2011 at Apollo Victoria replacing Lee Mead.

Evans will play the part of Fiyero in the production at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. He joins the existing company that includes Rachel Tucker as Elphaba and Louise Dearman as Glinda, with Julie Legrand as Madame Morrible, Clive Carter as the Wizard and Julian Forsyth as Dr. Dillamond.

The musical is now in its fifth year and has seen by more than three million people in London. Buy your Wicked Apollo Victoria Tickets.

Wicked has been voted the best long-running show in the West End at an awards ceremony this week.

The untold story of the witches of Oz was picked as top in this category at the BroadwayWorld.com UK Awards, closely followed by Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables.

Meanwhile, the overall title of Best Musical went to Love Never Dies, with Les Miserables named top in the Best Revival of a Musical category.

This comes after Wicked was also named Most Popular Show in the 2010 Laurence Olivier Awards – as voted for by the public – as well as Best West End Show at the WhatsonStage.com Awards and takes its total number of gongs worldwide to 35.

Now in its fifth year, an estimated three million people have seen Wicked in London at the Apollo Victoria Theatre.

In October 2010, it broke a West End record for the highest ever recorded weekly gross takings, brining in £923,612 in the week ending October 30th.

Read Wicked Tulsa Review by JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer on Tulsa World

At Thursday’s matinee performance, I sat behind what had to be the most ardent fans of Wicked in northeastern Oklahoma.

Not only did they know every word of every song of this musical (which opened its 16-performance run at the Tulsa PAC on Wednesday), this couple also quoted most of the show’s choicest lines of dialogue, usually in perfect sync with the performers on the Chapman Music Hall stage.

And they spent most of the intermission telling all who would listen how this particular performance compared to the one they had seen last summer, when “Wicked” spent a month at the PAC.

This particular touring production of the show benefits from a pair of excellent performances by its leading ladies, Vicki Noon as Elphaba and Natalie Daradich as Galinda.

Daradich’s Galinda has all the self-absorbed perkiness one expects, but she never slips into the cartoonish antics that we’ve seen other actresses use. Her Galinda is a little more complex, a little more human.

The same is true of Noon, who plays Elphaba as someone who truly feels the pain of being an outcast, rather than someone who relishes the anger her status engenders. Even the moment when she lets out a Margaret Hamilton-like cackle – which got one of the biggest ovations during Thursday’s matinee – had a kind of poignant edge to it.

Noon’s and Daradich’s singing voices are so finely matched that in their duets it often sounded as if some passages were sung by a single voice, rather than two. That, and the fact that the two women are the same height, emphasized the concept that these two very different people are two sides of the same coin.

The weak links in the cast – or, to draw from the clockwork theme of “Wicked’s” set design, the two cogs whose gears don’t quite mesh – are Chris Peluso as Fiyero and Don Amendolia as the Wizard.

Wicked continues with performances through Nov. 28 at the Tulsa Tulsa Performing Arts Center. Tickets are on Sale. Wicked Tulsa OK Tickets Online.

Wicked will blow you away and give you more of a background on what happened before Dorothy landed in Oz.

At the risk of giving away to much, this review will be rather vanilla in its approach for that reason. If I tell to much about it, I will give too much away and that just wouldn’t be fair to those who have yet to experience this hit musical.

The story is based around who the witches were in the “merry old Land of Oz” and how they grew up. From the birth of Elphaba (The Wicked Witch of The West) to how she became who she ended up being in The Wizard of Oz and beyond. As well as, the back story of the relationship between she and Glinda, (the Good Witch) starting out as Galinda, pronounced with a Ga.

There are plenty of ooh’s and ahh’s to be had and lots of laughter as the story unfolds in front of you. Vicki Noon, who plays Elphaba, gives a stellar performance and has superb vocal ability and range. She really does steal the show and makes you have a whole new appreciation for The Wicked Witch. Natalie Daradich, who portrays Glinda, is cute and bubbly, with an infectious amount of narcissism and straight ahead conceitedness. All in good fun though, she is the child of privilege, as opposed to Elphaba ,who is her polar opposite in more than just skin tone.

Kudos to Celebrity Attractions for bringing this back for a second year. Let us just hope that it will be a regular engagement in Tulsa.

Wicked is playing now at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center through November 28th, 2010. The performance schedule will be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday Evenings at 7:30 pm, Friday Evenings at 8:00 pm, Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2:00 pm and Saturday Evenings at 8:00 pm. No performance on Thursday, November 25th due to Thanksgiving holiday. Wicked Tulsa, OK Tickets starts at $30.00.

Read Wicked Review by Ernie Osborn on TulsaToday.com