Posted by: Adam
Posted on: Wednesday, June 14 2006
In an exclusive interview with the Star, producer David Stone revealed that when the hit musical reopens here on Oct. 6, the leading roles of Elphaba and Glinda will be played by Shoshana Bean and Megan Hilty, who were in the New York company together for over a year.
| "They have to really click together — and that's what happens when Shoshana and Megan are on stage." |
Wicked 's second visit to Toronto will have a first-rate cast.
"You can't just put two people into this show and hope the chemistry will happen," says Stone. "They have to really click together — and that's what happens when Shoshana and Megan are on stage."
Bean was only the second person to portray the green-skinned Elphaba, taking over for Idina Menzel in January 2005, whereas Hilty was the third Glinda, following Kristin Chenoweth and Jennifer Laura Thompson.
After a year in the role, Bean, 28, left Broadway to work on her recording career, but she will rejoin the Wicked tour this September in Portland, Ore. It's an appropriate place, because she was raised nearby in suburban Beaverton, graduating from high school there in 1995.
She studied at the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and moved to New York shortly after, landing a role in the off-Broadway revival of Godspell, which brought her to the attention of Stephen Schwartz, composer of both that show and Wicked.
Bean made her Broadway debut in Hairspray in 2002, went on to a national tour of Leader of the Pack and joined Wicked as a standby for Elphaba in August 2004, graduating to the part four months later.
The 25-year-old Hilty is also a native of the Pacific Northwest, born and raised in Bellevue, Wash. (She'll join the tour in Seattle, which will be a homecoming for her, as well.)
She studied at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, run by former Torontonian Elizabeth Bradley, and successfully auditioned for Wicked before she even graduated.
Like Bean, she joined the company in August 2004 as a standby for Glinda and performed the role a number of times before taking it over in May 2005. She did a full year of Wicked on Broadway, then took the summer off to work on a new musical version of Vanities.
The success of Wicked has become so astonishing that it amazes even its producer. "Sometimes we look at the numbers," Stone says, "and we can't believe it."
There are currently three companies doing the show in North America. The Broadway version has been running for nearly three years and is still playing to 100 per cent capacity, grossing $1.3 million (U.S.) a week.
"The advance sale in New York is higher than it's ever been," says Stone. "It's currently sitting at $35 million. The Chicago company is still selling out and will probably continue for at least two years, while the North American tour has broken box office records in every city it's played in."
There is a persistent myth that the show's appeal rests mainly with teenage girls, but Stone ordered a marketing study that disproved that notion.
"We found that Wicked has the broadest demographic possible, drawing equally from all age groups."
What's the show's appeal? Stone reiterates his message that the saga about the empowerment of a green-skinned witch in L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz resonates with "anyone who feels like an outsider in any way. And we've all felt like that at times."
But there's a subtler, more subversive influence at work. The graph of Wicked's rising popularity intersects the declining support for the George W. Bush government and Stone feels that's not coincidental.
"Wicked is about politics in general and maybe this administration in particular. It's about the way governments decide who's good and who's wicked depending on how they look ... a concept that's becoming increasingly unpopular."
Follow Stone's theory to its logical conclusion and you get a map of America no longer made up of red or blue states, but one that's, well, solid green.
"And that," smiles the producer, "would be just fine with me." |
