Wicked Tickets : Wicked Won The Audience Award For Popular Show At The 2010 Laurence Olivier Awards

Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman

. The story is loosely based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, a parallel novel of the 1939 film of L.

Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It is told from the perspective of the witches of the Land of Oz.The show celebrated its Seventh Anniversary on October 30, 2010. It is currently the 17th longest-running Broadway show in history, having played 2,950 performances as of December 12, 2010.

The score of Wicked is heavily thematic, bearing in some senses more resemblance to a film score than a traditional musical score. While many musicals' scores develop new motifs and melodies for each song with little overlap, Schwartz integrated a handful of leitmotifs throughout the production.

Some of these motifs indicate irony for example, when Galinda presents Elphaba with a "ghastly" hat in "Dancing through Life", the score reprises a theme from "What Is This Feeling?" a few scenes earlier,in which Elphaba and Glinda had espoused their mutual loathing.

Two musical themes in Wicked run throughout the score. Although Schwartz rarely reuses motifs or melodies from earlier works, the first Elphaba's theme came from The Survival of St. Joan, on which he worked as musical director. "I always liked this tune a lot and I never could figure out what to do with it," he remarked in an interview in 2004.

The chord progression that he first penned in 1971 became a major theme of the show's orchestration. By changing the instruments that carry the motif in each instance, Schwartz enables the same melody to convey different moods.

In the overture, the tune is carried by the orchestra's brass section, with heavy percussion. The result is, in Schwartz' own words, "like a giant shadow terrorizing you". When played by the piano with some electric bass in "As Long As You're Mine", however, the same chord progression becomes the basis for a romantic duet. And with new lyrics and an altered bridge, the theme forms the core of the song "No One Mourns the Wicked" and its reprises.

Schwartz uses the "Unlimited" theme as the second major motif running through the score. Although not included as a titled song, the theme appears as an interlude in several of the musical numbers.

In a tribute to Harold Arlen, who wrote the score for the 1939 film adaptation, the "Unlimited" melody incorporates the first seven notes of the song "Over the Rainbow." Schwartz included it as an inside joke as, "according to copyright law, when you get to the eighth note, then people can come and say, 'Oh you stole our tune.' And of course obviously it's also disguised in that it's completely different rhythmically.

Schwartz further obscured the motif's origin by setting it in a minor key in most instances. This also creates contrast in the songs in which it forms a part, for example in "Defying Gravity", which is written primarily in the key of D-flat major. In "The Wicked Witch of the East", however, when Elphaba finally uses her powers to let her sister walk, the "Unlimited" theme is played in a major key.

Wicked was nominated for ten 2004 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Orchestration and twice for Best Leading Actress, for Menzel and Chenoweth. Menzel won the Best Actress award, and the show also won the Tony Awards for Best Scenic Design and Best Costume design, notably losing Best Book, Score and ultimately Best Musical to Avenue Q.

In the same year, the show won six Drama Desk Awards out of eleven nominations, including in the Book, Director and Costume Design categories. The West End production was nominated for four Laurence Olivier Awards in 2007 but did not win any.

At the 2010 Laurence Olivier Awards Wicked London won the Audience Award for Most Popular Show.While not technically an "award", the character of Elphaba was named 79th on Entertainment Weekly's list of The 100 Greatest Characters of the Past 20 Years.

by: Cynthia Hoffman

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