It seems like we can't stop talking about musicals, even though we prefer our theatre with fewer songs and more interesting restrictions. However, yet another new musical has been announced for September this year and we think it's worth a mention. Wicked will transfer from Broadway to the Apollo Victoria, trailing three Tony Awards and a reputation as Broadway’s best-selling show for 82 consecutive weeks. The musical showfills in the backstory of the witches in The Wizard of Oz:
Long before Dorothy dropped 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. How these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years
A script by Winnie Holzman, who wrote the much-loved but hardly screened My So Called Life and music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, who put together surprisingly good songs for Godspell, Pippin and The Prince of Egypt promises a good evening out if you like the idea of singing green-skinned witches in large-scale stage spectacles. It is already being noted as one of the most expensive shows to open in London, with an unconfirmed production cost somewhere between six and ten million pounds. Witches need a diva-like 400 costumes and 80 wigs per show, apparently, as well as a full orchestra (whether the orchestra also require wigs and costumes per player is unconfirmed but with that £10million price tag, nothign could surprise us.)
However, the real pull of the show must be this:
Fans of The Wizard Of Oz will be glad to know that there will indeed be flying monkeys in the show
If these flying monkeys are even half as scary as the ones in the film, then we're block booking seats in the circle for a week to see them live. Let's hope they don't use live monkeys - if they do, fingers crossed they're better to work with than ducks.
