Showing posts with label Jenn Gambatese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jenn Gambatese. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Oz: The Great And Powerful Versus Wicked


This past weekend I was fortunate enough to get a chance to enjoy the musical show Wicked in Boston, and from the moment it began to the moment it closed, I was once again revisiting a familiar and welcome sensation.  Watching a story be presented live before you, seeing how the actors become stagehands and watching drama and comedy be connected to the audience so it can be properly paced gives an experience few movies have ever been able to capture on their own.

Now, I know that the show Wicked is very different from the book.  It has a more bittersweet ending, many characters and plot threads are dropped, and the fates of certain characters completely changed.  The stage show strips out a lot of the sex and politics (seriously, the book could be the next Game of Thrones series on HBO), However, when the person who wrote the book has attended the show dozens of times in the first four years it opened, I think it's safe to say that the edits aren't really all that bad.

There was another prequel to The Wizard Of Oz that came out not too long ago, so I guess the question is which one did a better job telling a good story?  Let's break the two down and see where each one went right and where each one went wrong.