What a special show we got to see last night, the very popular Wicked on stage at the San Diego Civic Theater (Wicked - Broadway San Diego.) It was clear from the packed house on a Wednesday night, and from the excited cheering as soon as the house lights dimmed and the music began, that the crowd was anticipating a wonderful experience. But what we got was even better than that - we got a once in a lifetime performance from two very talented, and obviously spontaneous, young women.
The premise of the show, as you may know, is the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, and Glinda, the Good Witch, from the Wizard of Oz. It is largely a story of friendship, when two complete opposites are forced to room together at boarding school and form an unlikely bond that lasts through the saga of Oz’s changing political and social climate, ending where the story of Dorothy’s journey begins.
In the first act, there is a scene between the two girls as they begin to let their walls down and trust each other. Galinda, the golden-haired, shallow, and popular girl, offers to give a makeover to Elphaba, who is a green-skinned, strong-willed social outcast. Alli Mauzey, the actress playing the ever-bubbly Galinda, discovered a rip in her pink ruffled skirt mid-scene and added a line to cover it up as she tucked the hanging fabric back in. She blithely hopped onto Elphaba’s bed, tucked up her feet, and repeated the original line as her castmate’s cue. As the scene progressed, the stray cloth escaped, and this time, Mauzy embraced it. True to her character’s obsession with fashion, she dubbed it “a new trend,” giggled, and twirled it around. Skipping back to Elphaba’s side, she dove back into the scene, only to be distracted by the trailing fabric again. Improvising, she tied it into a knot, took a satisfied look at it, and proceeded to do a series of goofy, self-congratulatory dance moves, a la Saturday Night Live’s Mary Katherine Gallagher: air punches, a high kick, several hop-hop-hops, and jazz hands in the air. All of this accompanied by Galinda’s high-pitched giggles and coos, and the hair flip for which her character is known. The audience ate it up, laughing harder with each self-absorbed display, while Nicole Parker, the more stoic Elphaba, observed with a tolerant but confused look. When Mauzy finally returned to the written dialogue, she added a quip, “I love me!” before saying, possibly to herself or maybe the audience, “Now focus!” It only cracked up the observers more. Parker took her cue unfazed, now wearing her hair down and a pink flower behind her ear, and stood up for Galinda to assess her “frock.” But instead of sticking to original blocking, she grabbed her skirt, scrunched it into a knot, stood to swing her hair left and right in imitation of Galinda, and even added three air punches and jazz hands.
The audience went wild.
Either these actresses are as good at improv as they are at learning lines and blocking, or they have become one with their characters so that ad libbing comes naturally, or perhaps they just have a lot of fun doing what they do on stage every night. It doesn’t matter, because it all worked, so well in fact that I believed their budding friendship even more as a result of the spontaneous display of Galinda’s self-absorbed goofiness and Elphaba’s sarcastic reaction. I suspect, though, that all three of my theories is true - they are fantastic actresses, they know their characters intimately, and they clearly enjoy what they do.
That scene could never have been written so brilliantly, and it will never be repeated in quite that way.
What a treat to witness it last night.
