by Carmen

December 14, 2005

From journal New York: It’s Christmastime in the City

Getting tickets to the Broadway show "Wicked" is like trying to find a needle in a haystack and then having to pay out the nose for it once you find it. I threw down $160 a piece (the show was "sold out" through Broadway.com and Gerswhin.com, where they were $75 to $100) at ticketsnow.com without any hesitations based on the reviews of a few friends and a couple of Tony Awards.

First, let me preface this review by saying I intensely dislike the Gershwin Theater. The elderly volunteer ticket checker (Betty) was the non-amusing pre-show entertainment, getting in fights with patrons over whether or not they’d showed her their tickets and how many and where their seats were, etc. (We tried to be a bit more patient than others, but it was hard.)

If there’s a good seat in the house, you’d have to walk me up to it and point it out, because I didn’t see any, and the seats we had (MMEZ, F13 and 14) were crap. The seating chart on the theater’s website is a bit misleading (the women sitting next to us also commented on how they were expecting different seats), and despite the fact that it LOOKS like it’s stadium seating, it’s not--I was looking around the gentleman’s head in front of me for the entire first act. The second act, thankfully, he changed seats with his daughter, so I could see the show without further neck injury.

But the resulting physical therapy would’ve been worth it, because this show is all it’s cracked up to be, and there is certainly no place like home. The women who played Glenda and the Wicked Witch had some of the best pipes I’ve ever heard, and Ben Vereen was endearing as the Wizard. My favorite part (if I could pick) was how the show let you in on background secrets of the Wizard of Oz (in case you didn’t know, it’s a prequel), like how the Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man came into being. The songs were also singable and memorable, and as soon as I write my reviews, I’m heading off to iTunes to download the soundtrack.

And what really sucks is I can’t discuss it with anyone, because the ending was truly surprising, and I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, because that was the most fun! Let me just say this--you’ll never watch the Wizard of Oz the same way again.

Get tickets to this show however you can--beg, steal, borrow--but bring a booster seat. Screw the person behind you; they can get their own booster seat. (Did I really say that?)

Related Wicked, The Musical (The Show) Deals