Previously I wrote about how I'd been rediscovering my love for musicals, and in the past six weeks or so Wicked fell a bit by the wayside. Les Miserables was my original favourite musical and I'd returned to it, playing one of it's various soundtracks more often than not. So when I booked my next trip to London I decided to make the most of my time and see two shows in one day - the matinee of Wicked, and the evening performance of Les Mis. This was 10 days ago now, and I had an amazing time and really enjoyed both shows, but seeing them back to back really made me realise that nowadays I can firmly say that Wicked is my favourite. Which 10 years ago is a comment I never thought I'd say!
I still have my ticket from the very first time I saw Wicked, and like I've explained before I didn't think much of it. Back then I was definitely a bit pretentious, but I really thought nothing could ever top Les Mis. And don't get me wrong, I still do love it and it's a very close contender, and they're obviously so very different that they could never be compared, but Wicked has definitely come to mean a great deal more to me at this stage of my life. And it's a realisation I'm glad to have made, as not only has it reignited my passion but it's also made me feel a lot less apologetic about it. I guess it's left over feelings of pretension from my teenage years as well as what I've absorbed from the musicals fandom, but I really don't care that I love something that's so popular because I don't need to score niche points by pretending to prefer more obscure shows, and I certainly don't need any of that petty BS in my life.
It was my third time seeing Wicked in as many months and I really do love the current London cast so much, Alice Fearn and Sophie Evans' chemistry together is amazing, they fit their roles so perfectly, they even look exactly how I imagine Elphaba and Glinda should look. Naturally I couldn't resist buying more from the merch stand when I was there, but I intend to do a collection post soon so you'll have to wait to see what I picked up. I also recently checked the US online web store for Wicked which was a huge mistake for my wallet. I always figured the shipping would be astronomical, but it actually isn't and there's a lot of things for sale that aren't available over here so that's my plan for after Christmas! I've also set my sights on making plans to travel to New York, but I'm playing it close to my chest right now as nothing is for sure! It's definitely a dream though, I'd love to see how the two productions differ.
In my quiet time away from this blog I've actually been drawing quite a lot of Wicked related artwork and still have plenty more ideas thumbnailed and planned out although I'm not under any pressure to complete them.
I wrote quite a bit about these three pieces over on my art blog if you fancy a read, but in short I drew Elphaba and Glinda with their corresponding classical elements as I became interested in how much they formed of their characters, and I drew a spoiler-ish scene from the Finale as I feel Fiyero's sacrifices are really overlooked.
Seeing the musical again also inspired me to continue on with Gregory Maguire's book, which I'm enjoying a lot but I haven't been in the head space for reading so it's been quite sporadic. I'm very near the end though, so I'll be sure to post a proper book review soon!
