Wicked

My wife dragged me to the musical Wicked over the weekend. She has been a Wizard of Oz fan for a long time, I guess, and a fan of musicals for about as long so I was pretty much destined to see it.

It turned out to be really good. I think we enjoyed it for very different reasons, but I did enjoy it. To be honest I did a lot of theatre in high school and went to school on a theatre scholarship my first semester of college, so its not brand new to me. I still have been much more a fan of straight plays than musicals in general.

As I was saying Wicked was really good, strangely enough it reminded me of Spamalot. Not because they are similar in any way, but because I really liked Monty Python as a kid, and they happened to make a great musical out of it. For my wife Spamalot is my Wicked and vice versa.

The reason that I enjoyed the show is because it has a lot to do with one of my favorite subjects. Good vs Evil. By Good vs Evil I don't mean man dressed in white saves the day from the mustached black clothed villain. It is more of a war of concept and an exploration of "Good". The show explores the Wizard of Oz story from the Wicked Witch of the East's perspective. It turns out the WWE was driven towards "evil" and was trying to be good after all, but the wizard is much better at publicity. It isn't a new concept. Richard the Lionhearted was probably a terribly poor king and Richard III probably wasn't that bad, but to the winners go the History books.

I guess the reason I like stories like this is because they reinforce the "Don't believe everything you hear" message. It's important to examine motives when evaluating information. People are always going to be motivated by unrelated external factors that are going to twist their message or perspective. That doesn't mean that all information is bad, merely that a lot of things need to be taken with a grain or two of salt.

So I enjoyed the musical, and would recommend it highly to anyone who enjoys theatre.