Wicked musical on national tour is currently in Richmond, VA and performing at Altria Theater – Richmond (Formerly Landmark Theater) [6 N Laurel St, Richmond, VA 23220] through May 04, 2014.

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‘Wicked’ is wonderful trip back to Land of Oz – Reviewed By TONY FARRELL, at TimesDispatch.com.

Lucky for us, here comes Broadway in Richmond’s “Wicked,” the ebullient, spectacular, Tony Award-winning musical reimagining of Baum’s original vision currently playing at the Altria Theater.

As crafted through Stephen Schwartz’s bold music and lyrics and story by Winnie Holzman, “Wicked” sets out to explain the story behind the story of Elphaba, the “Wicked Witch of the West,” and her connection to Glinda, the “Good Witch of the North.”

Charging relentlessly forward through more than 20 musical numbers under vast sets evoking the inner workings of a timepiece, “Wicked” brings every ounce of theatrical grandeur to bear on themes of good and evil, solitude and alienation, and even “tiktokism,” a Baum construct that imagined time as a sleeping dragon and clocks as portals to the past, present and future.

“Wicked” is a treatise on friendship, loyalty, and how all who come into our lives help to make us who we are, even as we go our own way. It’s a lesson we spend our entire lives learning, and whether we journey by bubble, broomstick or road of yellow brick, “Wicked” makes it one magical, magnificent trip.

Read the complete review {Via TimesDispatch.com}

Tickets are selling fast for Wicked Musical at Altria Theater – Richmond (Formerly Landmark Theater) as only final few performances left. Buy Wicked Richmond VA Tickets before they go on Sale completely. You can experience Wicked at Altria Theater – Richmond (Formerly Landmark Theater) through May 04, 2014.

Wicked first national tour is currently playing at the Providence Performing Arts Center (220 Weybosset St #2, Providence, RI 02906) for the third time since 2007 through January 12, 2014.

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Witches of Wicked Charm PPAC Audience – Reviewed By BILL RODRIGUEZ, http://providence.thephoenix.com/.

It’s not easy being green, but it’s no walk in the park being mean either. Those are the lessons of the wildly popular musical Wicked, on tour at the Providence Performing Arts Center in an extended run through January 12. Subtitled “The Untold Story of The Witches of Oz,” the tale has been seen by more than 13 million theatergoers from New York to Japan. With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, the book is by Winnie Holzman, and it was directed by Joe Mantello.

No Judy Garland look-alike appears, but occasional details from the movie emerge in the background, such as a glimpse of a yellow brick road and, in silhouette toward the end, a bucket of water melting the wicked witch, Elphaba (Alison Luff). (Don’t worry, in this telling that was faked, so she’s fine.)

This backstory to The Wizard of Oz takes place in a land of wand-waving and spell-casting that Harry Potter would enjoy. Children can be cruel, so we’d expect them to give Elphaba a hard time when she arrives at Shiz University, but her father has apparently been crueler, making clear that her only purpose in life is to take care of her wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose (Jaime Rosenstein).

Read the complete review {Via The Providence Phoenix}

Final few performances only left for Wicked Musical at Providence Performing Arts Center, Tickets are still available. Buy Wicked Providence RI Tickets before they go on Sale completely.

The hit Broadway musical Wicked is currently playing at the Providence Performing Arts Center (220 Weybosset St #2, Providence, RI 02906) for the third time since 2007 through January 12, 2014.

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Witches of Wicked Charm PPAC Audience – Reviewed By Andy Smith, ProvidenceJournal.com.

The witches of Oz still cast their spell.

The musical has a lot going for it, from the catchy tunes to Eugene Lee’s brilliant clockwork sets. But the key is the relationship between Elphaba, the wicked (and very green) witch, and her enemy-turned-friend Glinda.

Elphaba is the lead part (after all, the show is called “Wicked” ) and Alison Luff gave a strong performance as both actor and singer, belting out signature songs such as “Defying Gravity” while portraying her character’s progression from naivete to ambition, outrage and finally rebellion.

But Glinda, played by Gina Beck, had to carry much of the comedic load. Beck has a lovely voice, although not quite as strong as Luff’s, and she is a gifted comic actress.

Glinda is an insufferably shallow, perky blonde who dresses like Barbie, and is apparently beloved by all. The outcast Elphaba immediately despises her, as the two sing “What is This Feeling?” (It’s loathing, that’s what.).

But the two go on to develop a friendship — there is a very funny scene in which Glinda tries to teach Elphaba the proper way to toss her hair — before they are temporarily torn apart by both love and politics.

Read the complete review {Via ProvidenceJournal.com}

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Wicked is a standing production in London, United Kingdom and Coming into it’s 8th year at the Apollo Victoria Theatre the show continues to be a fun and huge musical that pays homage to, and poke fun at, the classic Oz tale – Reviewed by RuddleMatthew at TQSMagazine.co.uk.

Wicked is boldly epic in both plot and presentation: beginning at the end with the Wicked Witch of the West’s death, we flashback to her (Elphaba) birth, school days, and first meeting with Glinda as the musical tracks her rise and fall, revealing the ‘truth’ behind her wicked ways (no prizes for guessing all is not as we’ve been lead to believe).

Louise Dearman (Elphaba) and Gina Beck (Glinda) are the musicals true MVPs and they shine brightest whenever together on stage (‘What is this Feeling?’ showing off both their talents).  While Dearman’s vocals are powerful and soaring, and her Elphaba passionate and defiant, Beck’s vocals (and portrayal of Glinda) are light and fun. Dearman inhabits Elphaba so thoroughly, while Beck’s Glinda is so charmingly air-headed, that the strength of the characters carries the musical alone.

The songs in the first half are universally excellent, giving insight into characters’ personality and emotions while working to the story’s emotional beats, from fist-pumping solos to fun duets. However the songs in the second half do suffer compared to the first, never finding one as fun as ‘Popular’ or with the playful harmonies of ‘What is this Feeling?’ or as strong as ‘Defying Gravity’ (although ‘No Good Deed’ comes close).

But by this point the characters’ actions have come to a head and the plot itself catches up with the Wizard of Oz; seeing the reinterpretations and ‘behind-the-scenes’ moments is thrilling and the less memorable music doesn’t detract from the anticipation in seeing Elphaba and Glinda will resolve their differences.

Read the complete review {Via TQSMagazine.co.uk}

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Wicked musical is currently touring in Houston, TX Performing at Sarofim Hall Hobby Center (800 Bagby St, Houston, Texas 77002) through August 11, 2013.

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Wicked Shines When Glinda the Good Witch is on Stage – reviewed by D.L. Groover.

The set-up:
With all the aerial modes of transportation on display in Stephen Schwartz’s (and book writer Winnie Holtzman’s) megahit musical Wicked – winged monkeys, broomstick, tornado, fairground balloon, and bubble – you’d think this theatrical juggernaut from 2003, the fourth incarnation to visit Houston via Gexa on Broadway, would have learned how to fly.

The execution:
Based very loosely upon Gregory Maguire’s adult “prequel” to L. Frank Baum’s classic series of children’s books, this Broadway adaptation owes whatever magic it possesses to the long-ago, golden age wizards of MGM. Wicked’s creators should be on their knees in thanks, because without the cinematic references to characters, costume and set design, even lines of dialogue, this show would be nowhere.

The verdict:
The show, immensely popular and still selling out on Broadway as well as in every city it tours, is impervious to criticism. Ten years down the road, it has lost none of its power to beguile and will probably be around fifty years from now packing the house. This is family entertainment with a vengeance, and it’s heartening to see young ones in the audience so thrilled by live theater. But I think they marvel at the quantity, not the quality.

Read the complete review Via {Houston Press}

Last few chances left to see Wicked as the Tour will end in Houston Texas on August 11, 2013. Buy Wicked Sarofim Hall Hobby Center Tickets Online!

Wicked Musical currently touring in Costa Mesa CA for almost 4-week run through March 17, 2013. The Wizard of Oz has returned to the Segerstrom Center for the third time and reviewed by ANNE VALDESPINO – Here is the review:

Now a decade old, “Wicked” continues to set records for ticket sales and it still attracts an eclectic audience: little girls in ruby red dresses, punks with platinum hair, fresh-faced young women dragging their boyfriends, seniors and gay couples. Its soaring score, fantasy landscape, love story and a book packed with one-liners appeal to a wide demographic.

It’s no surprise that composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, with his love of challenging subjects, could craft a musical out of Gregory Maguire’s best-selling 1995 novel. “Wicked” bristles with great music, from its foreboding title track, “No One Mourns the Wicked,” to songs of young love awakening such as “I’m Not That Girl,” and plenty of anthemic ballads in between: “Defying Gravity” and “The Wizard and I.”

Schwartz is suddenly hot again – or perhaps he’s never gone cold. “Pippin” is poised for a spring Broadway revival, and “Wicked” is just more candy for his hard-core fans. The composer of “Godspell” and Disney musicals including “Enchanted,” “Pocahontas,” and “The Prince of Egypt,” Schwartz is a master of pulling on heartstrings.

“Wicked” is about the odd friendship of two girls, one blond and popular, the other a green witch with strange powers. Thrown together accidentally, they experience the typical phases of teen relationships: first dances, bonding over clothes and hairstyles, fighting over the cutest boy in the school. Add politics, sorcery, betrayal and murder to the mix.

Continually taunted for her green skin, Elphaba attends school only to care for her wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose, and meets her opposite, Glinda, the girl with the golden hair. At first they tangle, then become roomies and best friends. Handsome prince Fiyero tests their loyalties by first falling for Glinda and then taking up Elphaba’s political cause: her championing of animal rights, which lands her in deep trouble at school and with the Wizard. Meanwhile, Nessarose has her heart set on Boq, a Munchkin who only has eyes for Glinda.

Read the complete review {Via OCRegister.com}

Wicked musical will play through March 17, 2013 at Orange County Performing Arts Center – Segerstrom Hall. Buy Wicked Costa Mesa CA Tickets Online – SAVE $10 when you spend $350 or more, Use code AFF$10.

Wicked Musical currently Stops in San Francisco CA for almost 4-week run. Wicked will be performing at Orpheum Theater SF through February 17, 2013. Wicked musical play at Orpheum Theater reviewed by Robert Hurwitt – Here is the review:

Elphaba, the green girl, flies high and sings with beautifully modulated power as she becomes the Wicked Witch of the West in the touring production of “Wicked” that opened Thursday at the Orpheum Theatre. Glinda the Good matches her vocally and dazzles the audience with charm. And that may be the bigger story.

Understudy Cassie Okenka rose from the ensemble to don Glinda’s blond locks, pink frocks and sunnily self-absorbed personality when co-star Patti Murin was sidelined with the flu Thursday. From her glittering first notes through every step of an assured performance, Okenka more than gave the audience its money’s worth at the latest show in SHN’s season.

It was another nice turn in San Francisco’s long relationship with composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz and librettist Winnie Holzman’s adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s dystopian “Oz” prequel. The show had its world premier here in 2003, before going on to become one of Broadway’s hottest tickets, and returned for a prolonged run in ’09.

It’s very much the same, well-oiled production as last time, staged with quick-paced clarity by Joe Mantello and inventively boisterous dance by Wayne Cilento. The great smoke-breathing mechanical dragon looms above the massive gears and clockworks of Eugene Lee’s Victorian steam-punk set. The cast creates sharp individual portraits in Susan Hilferty’s scruffy peasant, odd animal and glittering Emerald City costumes.

The heart of “Wicked” is the story of Elphaba and Glinda, accidental roommates and rivals in wizardry and romance at Shiz University. Dee Roscioli shines as the shy but assertive, sharp-tongued green girl, the eternal outsider blessed – and cursed – with magical powers she’s only learning to use.

Though she’s played Elphaba more often than anyone else, Roscioli keeps the role fresh and immediate, whether navigating her uneasy growing closeness with Glinda or confronting the villainies of Kim Zimmer’s outrageously formidable Madame Morrible and the vaudevillian con-man Wizard of Kevin McMahon (also filling in for an ailing regular).

Read the complete review {Via SFGate.com}

Wicked musical will play through February 17, 2013 at Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market St., S.F. Buy Wicked San Francisco CA Tickets Online – SAVE $10 when you spend $350 or more, Use code AFF$10.

Wicked Musical is currently performing at The Fabulous Fox Theatre – St. Louis, MO. Based on the novel by Gregory Macguire, “Wicked” is the back story of “The Wizard of Oz.” Wicked musical play at The Fabulous Fox Theatre reviewed by Andrea Braun. Here is the review:

The story begins with the birth of a bright green infant named Elphaba conceived in a one-night stand in which her apparently slutty mom slept with a man addicted to a colored substance he shared with her. So, okay, we don’t start out with a woman being anything but a stereotype. As it happens, said woman is married to the Governor of Munchkinland (only he’s not short) whom she does not love. Still, they conceive another daughter, Nessarose, who is born early and damaged from the plant her husband forces upon the mom to ensure the child is not green. Well, she’s not, but she’s premature and has underdeveloped legs, and her mother dies, leaving Elphaba with only a green bottle to remember her by.

We next see the sisters when their father drops them off at Shiz, a tony prep school for well-to-do children of powerful Ozians (Oz is an area divided into several different lands but all are under the control of the “Wonderful Wizard” of Oz.) Elphaba is only sent to be a guardian to daddy’s darling wheelchair-bound Nessa, but she displays her extraordinary powers early (she’s like The Hulk: You really don’t want to make her angry AND she’s green). The headmistress, Madame Morrible, selects her for special training, a privilege the wealthy and spoiled Galinda assumed would be hers. Instead, the vapid blonde and the smart green girl end up roommates who move from “loathing” (“What Is This Feeling”) to BFFs fairly quickly (in musical terms, within two songs before“Popular”).

Gregory Maguire’s novel, Wicked, tells the story of the “Wicked Witch of the West” before Dorothy blew into town, but the musical is quite different from its source material. Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics) and Winnie Holzman (book) have created an entirely sympathetic Elphaba, a finally admirable Glinda (after she realizes her happiness is not the entire world’s responsibility), and others who are good—Fiyero, beloved of both Elphaba and Glinda, and Boq, a virtual slave to the nasty Nessa—or bad—Morrible, the Wizard. A talented singing and dancing chorus functions as Shiz students, citizens of Oz, palace guards, and those famous flying monkeys. It is a lovely looking show, leaning toward gears and a big clock and stylized costumes. It’s essentially really elaborate Steampunk.

Read the complete review {Via PLAYBACKstl.com}

Wicked will be in Saint Louis MO through January 6, 2013. Buy Wicked The Fabulous Fox Theatre Tickets Online – SAVE $10 when you spend $350+, Use code AFF$10.

Wicked Musical is currently performing at Fabulous Fox Theatre-St. Louis, MO. Based on the novel by Gregory Macguire, “Wicked” is the back story of “The Wizard of Oz.” Harry Hamm reviewed the musical at stlouis.cbslocal.com. Here is the review:

From every production value you can imagine, and some you probably couldn’t until you see the show, “Wicked” is a masterwork of staging and creativity. It is the kind of production that challenges itself on every level and succeeds brilliantly. Casting is always a strong point of this production and in this visit, it is exceptional as well. Christine Dwyer as Elphaba carries the role with a wonderful voice and strident, authentic strength of character.

Jeanna de Waal as Glinda is sweet, funny and full of feeling when it is needed. The performance chemistry between she and Dwyer is genuinely winning.

Supporting and ensemble casts member are all outstanding, especially Jay Russell as Dr. Dillamond, Billy Harrigan as Fiyero and Paul Kreppel as The Wizard.

“Wicked” is a musical that is moving, amusing, exciting, funny and heartfelt. Subtexts abound. There are so many elements that can relate to almost any audience member about instances in their own stories that in many ways “Wicked” becomes a reaffirmation of life. And by the way, the 14 piece orchestra, under the baton of Valerie Gebert, and including 9 local musicians, makes the music soar. “Wicked” will be on stage at The Fabulous Fox Theatre through January 6.

Read the complete review {Via stlouis.cbslocal.com}

Wicked will be at Fox Theatre through January 6, 2013. Buy Wicked Saint Louis MO Tickets Online at discounted prices – SAVE $10 when you spend $350+, Use code AFF$10.

Wicked second national tour is currently in Baltimore, MD for the second time for a month long run from October 03 to November 04, 2012. Wicked first visited Baltimore in 2007.

Here is the review of the Wicked musical by Tim Smith at BaltimoreSun.com:

Equal parts nostalgia and hipness, satire and sentiment, one-liners and philosophy, the hit musical “Wicked” remains a potent brew. Bewitching, even.

This tale-spin about life in Oz, before that rude girl from Kansas crashed the place, is neither quite as profound as its most ardent champions would aver, nor quite as empty as its detractors have charged. But the work’s component parts certainly come together snappily in ways that create entertainment writ large.

The plot, adapted by Winnie Holzman from the Gregory Maguire novel, presents a back-story for the peculiarly green woman we last saw in a puddle — the Wicked Witch of the West, who tried so darn hard for the return of those jeweled slippers in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”

Various details we accept as gospel from that movie get some interesting twists (better to … forget what you remember Margaret Hamilton’s iconic witch doing to the Scarecrow). And, like in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” characters are apt to shift between good to evil without warning.

Oz, it turns out, is not entirely Eden-like. The Wizard happily tells his people lies, because “they were lies they wanted to hear.” Prejudice, intolerance, suspicion of the “other,” power-hunger, fast-flying rumor — it’s all happening in or around this emerald-tinted world.

Some of these issues, especially a campaign against talking animals (a chilling classroom scene is fully Third Reich-redolent), could use more depth. But the fast-moving, if opera-length, show stays primarily focused on the emotional journey of the supposedly wicked witch, Elphaba, how and why she moved toward the dark side.

One of the tricky things about “Wicked” is how to keep the Glinda character from tilting the musical her way; she spreads glitter from the get-go and could go on to steal any scene.

The touring production boasts terrific balance and chemistry between the two leads — Christine Dwyer’s sensitive, wry Elphaba and Jeanna de Waal’s iridescent Glinda. Both are nuanced actresses who manage to tap into something genuine about the characters. Their unlikely friendship, the bond that changes both women “for good,” resonates strongly here.

Dwyer doesn’t just nail the glum, glib side of Elphaba, but unleashes the eager little girl beneath. Even in her most theatrical moments, she doesn’t lose a touch of humanness.

Would that Stephen Schwartz’s score contained a few more items of that cleverness. A lot of the songs are in generic pop mode, spinning their wheels over well-worn harmonic paths and failing to generate a really strong melodic hook.

The supporting cast does uniformly persuasive work. Paul Kreppel makes a disarming Wizard, Gina Ferrall a colorful Madame Morrible. Billy Harrigan Tighe has the fresh, all-Ozian looks and smooth swagger for Fiyero, the man who lights a spark under Elphaba and Glinda.

Read the complete review {Via BaltimoreSun.com}

Wicked musical performances at Hippodrome Theatre will continue through Sunday November 04, 2012. Buy Wicked Baltimore MD Tickets Online at discounted prices, Get $10 OFF on Orders of $350 or more by using code AFF$10.