Review of the Wicked Broadway tour at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theater

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I used to live in New York City when I went to college, as I attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for my undergraduate degrees, but when I left the city because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never really returned, I knew that I was regretting my time in college not taking advantage of student deals for Broadway and Off-Broadway productions.

Granted, I had never been exposed to that kind of environment, or theatre at all, so when I started working in New York theatre and spent some time in that world, I jumped back into it. This blog has been a way to document my journey as a theatre lover and watcher, especially considering I don’t like to do short-form video. Written criticism has always been my thing more.

Nowadays I live in Maryland, which is a bit far, but I do make the trek up to New York when I have the chance. I have been exploring the joys of local theater and the Broadway tours, which is how I ended up going to see Wicked. My sister purchased the tickets for Christmas, which was kind of her, especially considering they massively raised the prices for this specific show. We had upper balcony seats and they were still over $120—that’s not normal for this theater from what I’ve seen before here.

Something I’ve consistently noted about local theaters is that often this is people’s first encounter with professional (or community) theater, and they don’t know how to act. Our specific show of Wicked had a ton of kids, which was interesting to me, but some parents were having entire conversations with their kids in the middle of a song or dialogue. I also think food shouldn’t be sold in theaters, as it was so noisy as everyone around us was loudly munching of popcorn, playing with wrappers, or digging around to find their food in their bag.

That said, that has nothing to do with Wicked itself—that’s just an audience and etiquette observation. Let’s get into the actual review of the production!

Elphaba and Glinda go from enemies at their university to at opposite ends of a political game.

Considering the popularity of the Wicked movies as of late, I assume many may know the plot of the musical already. For those who don’t, here’s quick synopsis: Elphaba, also known as the Wicked Witch of the West, is born with green skin and ostracized by everyone in her life because of it. When she goes to university to protect her disabled sister, she encounters Galinda (later dubbed Glinda), a girl who’s gotten everything she wanted in life and popular.

The two are at each other’s throats but become roommates anyways. As Elpahaba discovers the animals of Oz are being forced to lose their ability to speak and are being put in cages, she puts their cause at the front of her mind—along with the new prince at the school: Fiyero. She eventually bonds with Glinda and they become best friends.

But when Elphaba achieves her lifelong dream of meeting the Wizard of Oz, she discovers he’s the reason why the animals are being put in cages. She decides to defy him and make it her life mission to free the animals, and the state of Oz deems her wicked and someone who must be captured because of it. Glinda becomes a main part of Oz, transforming into Glinda the Good, putting these two at odds with each other yet again.

Wicked has been a main Broadway show and a magnet for out-of-town tourists for over two decades now because it’s from a story that people know well (The Wizard of Oz), and it puts on quite a performance throughout its run time. Some of the shows from the show are Broadway and musical staples, and a lot of people know them quite well in American popular culture. I wouldn’t call it mainstream until recently though.

The touring production was high quality, as expected. I was interested to see how they were going to do with the reduced set, as Broadway tours are unable to use the same full sets due to time and space limitations, but I thought this show utilized the space quite well.

There are some scenes that are completely empty and you can kind of feel it, but it works at times to enhance the characters’ emotional arcs. Every single actor showed up to do their best, and there wasn’t anyone who I thought was miscast in the slightest. The standouts were Elphaba and Glinda—I thought the Fiyero did a good job, but he wasn’t particularly striking in this role.

It was interesting, after seeing the movies, to compare how the movies had more space and room to expand on the lore. The stage production is the bare bones of the story compared to the movies, as we don’t really go into detail. I’ve always found the actual book and story of Wicked as a musical to be weak, and now that I’ve seen it unfold in front of me on stage, I can see how it lacks much-needed context and moves too quickly at times through the story to fit a specific amount of time.

As someone who has loved this show for over a decade, I will say this performance of “No One Mourns the Wicked” felt a bit anticlimactic though. That’s my favorite number from the entire show, so I was a tad disappointed to see it. But, in the end, that’s my high expectations just probably being a little too high.

Overall Thoughts

All in all, this is another touring production that proves to me that touring productions are just as good as the fixtures in New York! Some people tend to think that NYC is the end-all be-all for theater and that you have to go to the city to see shows, but it’s often unaffordable and inaccessible to large segments of the population.

At the theater I work at we did a production on Hallie Flanagan and the WPA, which, during the Great Depression, put out touring theaters shows throughout the country with the Federal Theatre Project. For many Americans they were able to see theater for the first time for free and at a low cost, and while Broadway tours are still a little pricy, it gives people an opportunity to see high-quality professional theater without spending a lot to go to NYC.

And, at the end of the day, this show is Wicked. It has some special magic to it that makes people want to keep going to see it. It also fits in well with today’s politics and how we try to treat people like the animals in Oz.

Heck, I tend to hate tourist shows in New York, but this is one of the few I’ve been wanting to see but don’t want to pay a ton of money to go and see. A lot of the actors also work on Broadway for the tours—when I saw the &Juliet tour, I had seen a handful of the cast in other Broadway shows in NYC.

If this tour comes to your town, pick up a ticket or two if you can afford it! I think it’s worth it.

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