Extremely Wicked!

One of the greatest joys of working in Yuma has been working alongside Ms. Nikki Olsen.  She's been a good friend and has taught me a lot about what drama can do, and what drama should do.  And she has very graciously included me in so many things that Kofa drama has done, including this past Thursday when we all traveled up to Phoenix to see...WICKED!

It was one of those rare mornings down here when it was raining.  This also left he morning a bit chillier than normal, but set a nice tone for what we were heading off to do.  The clouds were gorgeous!  And as you can see, not only did we see one of the clearest and strongest rainbows I've ever seen, but it balanced out into a double rainbow.  Can you appreciate the irony?  Here's a group of 10 drama kids and their teacher, heading to see Wicked, and we find ourselves driving next to a rainbow, in a city that almost never sees rain.  I took this as approval from either a higher power, or at the very least, Dorothy was with us.


The drive to Phoenix from Yuma is about 3 hours long, and in a car full of teenagers, you can probably imagine the conversations and music.  But add to that, that these were Drama kids, and it just adds another layer.  I think we listened to "Defying Gravity" at least 10 times, and these kids sounded GOOD as they sang along.  Totally impressive.  As host in this van, I felt an obligation to provide.  So I brought ways to charge iPods, listen to music through the car's stereo, the last 9 editions of Entertainment Weekly, and enough snacks to make the other van jealous, including donuts, chips, and Oreo's.  It was a great start.

We got to Phoenix and ended up parking a few blocks away, because Gammage (the theater where this took place, didn't allow for parking.  But this was okay because we were on ASU campus and all the shopping one could want was nearby.  We were a few hours early so we wandered around shopping for a while, then eventually stopped and had lunch at a little pizza place called Slices.  Not too bad.  One of the most memorable moments was joking about Megan being a princess and feeding the birds, when I swear the birds started listening and responding to her!  It was insane.

 This was Megan and I standing outside the ticket booth.  We got pretty good prices for tickets, because we attended a special matinee geared toward students.  However, Ms. Olsen was on top of things and got us on the ground floor, meaning we had better seats than nearly any students attending.  The funny thing was, we were then surrounded by an ocean of gray hair!  There were SO many snowbirds here.!

While we were instructed not to take pictures during the event, I did sneak this one through; it's a shot of the stage before everything started.  That's a map of OZ, and an animatronic dragon that actually lit up and moved a bit at important times.  Surprisingly, the dragon blended in with everything on stage and you rarely were aware he was present.

Obviously I don't have any pictures from during the play.  While I perhaps could have snuck some, I respect the request of the theater.  The show was AMAZING!  Elphaba was portrayed by Mamie Parris, and she was brilliant.  Her voice was gorgeous, and all that she did was believable.  (As a side note, the playbill described that Mamie was actually a distant relative of Reverend Samuel Parris, of Crucible fame.  Is that irony or what?)  But her finest moments came next to Katie Rose Clarke, who portrayed Glinda. These ladies were a spectacular combination.  There were times when, honestly, it was like Kristin and Idina were performing for us.  The antics of the two we saw on stage were near identical to the two brilliant ladies who created the roles.  Amazing is the only word to describe them.

The story was fun, the songs suddenly made so much more sense (since I've owned the soundtrack a very long time) and the climax of the first half, when Elphaba kicked into "Defying Gravity" will long be burned in my head.  I think one of the best things about the show was that I had a good idea of what was going to happen in the first half, but no idea what took place in the second.  Which left for a lot of surprises.  Even the ending, with all I knew, had somehow eluded me, which was delightful!  I was sitting next to Marion during the show, and I think I surprised her when I whispered, "No way."

We were done with the play by 5, and then headed out to the trailer for a few shots.  While waiting for everyone to gather, I got one by myself.

To the left was a distant shot of all of us.  And below was a much closer one.  Dang it I love these kids
The longest part of the drive home was just getting out of the parking lot.  That must have taken an hour.  I missed my turn or took the wrong turn 3 times on the way to Gila Bend, but we all caught up by Maricopa.  We were back in town by 10, and by the time the kids had all been picked up and Nikki and I had returned the vans, I was home just after 11.  I was tired and exhausted, but still smiling and singing by the time I returned home.  All in all, a day that was fun, memorable, and extremely Wicked!