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| | Issue #19.35 :: 03/26/2008 - 04/01/2008 | Something ‘Wicked’ this way comes as theater offshoot debuts tribute to hit Broadway musical
| BY STACEY HUDSON
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Photo by Tiki Wilson
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A Tribute to ‘Wicked’
Club Argos
Thursday, April 3
706-481-8829
myspace.com/onenightinoz
clubargos.net
AUGUSTA, GA- There are only a few shows that have elevated themselves to pop-culture status in the last half-century, and among such titles as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” no other production has been quite as successful as the Broadway musical “Wicked.”
“We went to see it when it came to Atlanta at the Fox Theatre, and we were so blown away,” said Robert Seawell, known for years in the community as drag queen Claire Storm.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is the most incredible show I’ve ever seen.’ We’ll never have the budget to put it on like that, but we can do well enough.”
So his small troupe, the MisFit Theatre Group, decided to open their season with a tribute to the 10-time Tony Award nominated production that tackles the back story of the wicked witch in the musical “The Wizard of Oz.”
“It’s a story about the underdog, the character that everybody hated all these years. Nobody ever wondered who she was, or why was she so mean, or why did she want those dang red slippers,” Seawell laughed.
Seawell — in his persona as Claire Storm — plays the lead character, Elphaba, and Alisa Farrington plays Glinda. It’s a complicated plot with underlying stories about good and evil, social politics and the natural prejudices of the human race.
Venues sometimes run the two productions back-to-back, with “Wicked” as a live production and “Wizard” as a film presentation afterwards because it lends new subtext to the story of Dorothy in Oz. You find out that Elphaba was never actually the villain at all. The twist comes in finding out who that villain is.
Matt Lindsey plays Fiyero, Elphaba’s love interest, who later becomes the Scarecrow from the “Wizard” story. Olli Twist plays Boq, who transforms into the Tin Man. Pamela Harris plays Madam Morrible, power-hungry headmistress of the magical university. Curtis Randall plays Doctor Dillamond, an animal professor at the university who is the victim of brutal suppression. Sommer Night plays Nessarose, Elphaba’s crippled sister, in whose service the legendary ruby slippers were created. And John Temple, most recently seen in “Cabaret” at the Fort Gordon Dinner Theatre, will play the Wizard, a darker and more nefarious character than friends of Dorothy could ever have imagined.
“It was so hard to put this together,” Seawell laughed. The expenses alone would break less determined casts. The makeup takes forever. But each of them toss into the pot what they can and the result is a lesson that mirrors the moral of the play, he said: “Don’t underestimate people just because they’re different.” | |
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