This isn’t a sponsored post.
BrumHour saw Wicked at the invite of Birmingham Hippodrome.
For Brum Radio’s Interval Theatre, Carl Man spoke about his role in the touring production of Wicked. Listen below:
By Dave Massey twitter.com/BrumHour
Review: Wicked at Birmingham Hippodrome
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐”Wonderfully Wicked”
Directed by Joe Mantello, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by Winnie Holzman
Theatre shows don’t come much bigger, bolder or louder than Wicked which had flown into Birmingham Hippodrome for five full weeks of performances.
Elphaba (Laura Pick) and Glinda (Sarah O’Connor) are thrown together as roommates and become class rivals in their university education. With the arrival of Fiyero (Carl Man) a love triangle starts to brew between Fiyero and the two young ladies. Soon Madame Morrible (Donna Berlin), a college head at the university, discovers that Elphaba has a natural talent for magic and spells. Madame Morrible sets about giving Elphaba personal tuition.
It’s easy to call Wicked a spectacle, there are some very complex moments with choreography, scene changes, costume changes and theatre magic. Tonight’s performance was delayed by twenty-five minutes, with a production representative coming out twice to ask for our patience, unusual in that we were already seated. Not that it mattered. Whatever the issue was I didn’t spot it once the curtain went up.
Having seen this before in 2018 I was surprised how much of the plot elements I’d forgotten, but I’m just here to see Defying Gravity, which for me is Wicked’s signature song, it is beautifully handled and looks stunning as the curtain falls from the first half. I do like Popular as a song too.
The performances from the leads Laura Pick and Sarah O’Connor are smooth and very confident, the merry old land of Oz seems quite Mid-Atlantic (Is it English, is it American? Does it matter?) Carl Man is excellent as Fiyero and puts his stamp on this character unique to the world of Wicked.
The success of the story relies heavily on your knowledge of The Wizard Of Oz its threads and the themes it puts into presenting a flip side of that story. Personally I don’t think it matches all the components but that’s a story issue and not a production issue. Picky, picky, picky. You probably already love this production and therefore it doesn’t matter if I do or not. I liked it a lot. The audience LOVED it. I don’t think I’ve heard a louder reaction at the end of act one at Birmingham Hippodrome.
The first half is 85 minutes then the second half is one hour, plus there is a twenty minute interval. Time passes very very quickly really. Blink and you’ll miss a fantastic show.
A wonderful production, Wicked is at Birmingham Hippodrome until 7th April 2024. Book tickets here: birminghamhippodrome.com/calendar/wicked-2.
