Snow Show

My neighborhood looks beautiful in the snow. It was fun to walk around it yesterday, taking pics and stopping for brunch at the one place that was open and generally doing anything possible to postpone going home and shoveling out the four feet of snow drifts blanketing my driveway.
Then yesterday evening I left the warm confines of the couch to walk down to PPAC. A friend had offered me a ticket to Wicked and neither of us were about to pass it up because of the snow. Apparently everyone else felt the same way, because it was a full house. And with good reason.
The show, as most people probably know, is based loosely on the Wizard Of Oz. It tells the story of how Glinda and the Wicked Witch got that way, right up to and through the familiar plot elements of the film we know, but with a totally different spin. A friend, picking us up after the show, asked if it had messed up the original story. No, we replied in unison; it made it better.
And it did. It was clever, without feeling forced; more complex and nuanced in its understanding of character; and full of heart. Even from up in the nosebleeds, the show managed to be engaging and entertaining, while PPAC’s fine acoustics showcased some pretty amazing singing. It wasn’t uniformly excellent, but the two female leads were both very strong.
So as we all settle in holiday classic-movie-watching mode, I’ll be keeping an eye out for a repeat of Oz, knowing I’ll find Dorothy less irritating and the Scarecrow more interesting now I know about the drama unfolding behind the movie scenes. A good excuse to stay couch-bound next snowstorm.