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As the public face of the distinguished Inside the Actors Studio and the illustrious New School University, I’m constantly approached by inquisitive theater aficionados of every stripe and asked the same prescient question: In this impersonal digital age, in this culture that puts so low a premium on the arts, in this new era of corporate barbarism, how will the live theater survive in the 21st century?
There was a time when even I fretted to answer this query. But now, I’m elated to say that I can look them directly in the eye and answer them with confidence. My answer is a single word, one that thrills and delights new generations of theatergoers with its dashingly intelligent and sensitive examination of adolescent confusion, its aesthetic sophistry, and a labyrinthine musical score that will one day take its place in the American oeuvre alongside masterworks like Porgy and Bess and Sweeney Todd.
My answer, of course, is Wicked.
And it is now my immense pleasure to recommend this rare gemstone of a musical to the denizens of Chicago, a city that for decades has richly deserved such a quality theatrical experience, and finally has one to call its own.
Much like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, playwright Tom Stoppard’s cunning meditation on the minor characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Wicked daringly explores the heretofore unexamined psychology and history of Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. Freeing these two complicated women from the childlike boundaries of the Wizard of Oz, Wicked forces us to rethink everything we thought we knew about that magical land beyond the rainbow.
When Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Alyson Hannigan appeared on our program, we talked about the burdens of playing gender ambiguity in a female-driven drama about the supernatural, especially at a time when so few women are represented in that zeitgeist genre. She noted that, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie before her, the challenges...
Read more in next week's issue of TOC: Trump On Chicago!
Is this some kind of joke? Yes, actually. The above was part of TOC's 2008 April Fool's issue. Read more about it here.
