Wicked – The Musical vs. The Book November 17, 2006
Posted by yuling in Art, Reading.trackback
A while back, I finished reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Jon-C gave it to me for my 25th bday and it was an ok read. I thought the idea/plot was creative, but there were tons of rabbit trails that led to nowhere. It was pretty trippy at times (almost like Alice in Wonderland), but sometimes it seemed the author was going for weird for the sake of weird.
Now, when Jon gave me the book, he already saw the musical based on said book. Last night, I went to go see it with a bunch of friends. It was very good, lots of fun. Although some of the timing of the dancing was a little off, and there was especially one song that had clashing voices (as long as you’re mine), I thought the musical was a better story/experience as compared to the book. The characters and the humor was just plain fun. So if you can still catch it before it leaves TO, go for it.
[...] This reviewer compared Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked to Stephen Schwarz’s musical adaptation, and the musical came out on top. Surprising to someone such as myself who enjoyed the book so much, but his points were well-taken. Mostly, the reviewer “Yuling” enjoyed the way the musical polished out some of the otherworldly literary red-herrings present in Maguire’s novel: “I thought the idea/plot was creative, but there were tons of rabbit trails that led to nowhere. It was pretty trippy at times (almost like Alice in Wonderland), … I thought the musical was a better story/experience as compared to the book. The characters and the humor was just plain fun. So if you can still catch it before it leaves TO, go for it.” [...]
Yuling, I see you found my blog, thanks for the post. Would you like to do a guest blog on my site? You could say much of what you said here, and maybe just talk about one scene that particularly struck you as quintessential to the musical, and of course plug for your own blog. I like your writing style and the layout you’ve got is minimalist without being austere, so I’d love to share some traffic and gain the difference in perspective your input would give. The StubHub site gets 3 Million unique visitors/month, so you could get quite a few people coming in.
Tell me what you think, I’d love to talk to you about it.
John