No Good Voice Goes Unpunished

Wicked needs to give its leading ladies a break, and make their Elphaba standbys into alternates.

In 2008, Caissie Levy had to end her contract early in LA due to vocal problems. Teal Wicks took over as lead, but fell sick in the last few days of her run. This sickness carried over to the San Francisco production, which she opened early this year (though the standby Vicki Noon actually performed the first preview), and Teal had to take over a full month off to recover.

Kerry Ellis, who is arguably one of the strongest Elphabas vocally when she's on her game, had various vocal problems and sickness throughout her three years in the role as well. Most notably near the end of her first London run she missed many shows, and that unfortunately carried over to Broadway as well in mid 2008.

In summer of 2009, Amanda Harrison, Melbourne's Elphaba, had to take a full two months off, and returned only just in time to close the production before moving to Sydney.

And more recently Alexia Khadime in London (pictured above) has been off more often than she's been on. At the moment Alexia and Ashleigh Gray (s/b) are switching off, and Shona White (Elphaba s/b from 2008) has been brought back in case she's needed.

These are just the more recent, and severe, examples. Nearly all the women who played Elphaba for an extended period of time have finished with varying degrees of vocal damage.

There are, of course, exceptions. Nicole Parker recently finished a 6 month run on Broadway with excellent attendance. She also often noted how Wicked is a "24-hour-a-day job," and all of her days were spent preparing for that evening's performance.

But Teal had excellent attendance as well through the majority of her time in LA, as did Alexia during her first run in London. Who's to say Nicole wouldn't suffer if she were to return?

The German production of Wicked has an Elphaba alternate, and I believe the remaining productions should follow their example. Elphaba is demanding not only vocally, but also physically due to the amount of time the character is on stage, and the weight of her costume (especially her Act 2 dress!).

Let an Elphaba alternate go one just once or twice a week. The lead will stay healthier. The standby-turned-alternate now gets guaranteed scheduled shows. Fans will know with greater confidence when their prefered Elphaba will be on, and most of the general public who sees the show won't know any different. Not to mention the powers that be won't have to do as much scrambling to find temporary covers for Elphaba when the lead is gone for extended periods of time. (Before setting up Shona's return, the producers were ready to have Stephanie J Block take over for two weeks in London!)

Seems like everyone wins.

"That's also from the show!"

Not much to say this time around, just sharing a new youtube video that I've fallen in love with:

In the Heights: Run This Tour

(I'd embed it, but the video overlapped with the sidebar on the right.)

I haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing In the Heights, but you can bet I'll be at the Pantages next summer when the tour comes through. And while I would have loved, of course, to see Lin-Manuel Miranda in the show, I'm really looking forward now to seeing how Kyle Beltran does as lead.

Scott Alan in Concert

Scott Alan. Where to start?

I went to his concert in Hollywood on September 19, and it was perhaps the best $15 I've spent in a long time. The venue, M Bar, was smaller than I'd expected (according to their website, they have an approximate seating capacity of 95), and I ended up sitting in a booth right at the very front.

It was a very casual and entertaining evening. Scott sang the majority of the songs, with each of his six guests (Eden Espinosa, Hadley Fraser, Jenna Leigh Green, Megan Hilty, Maurice Murphy, and Tracie Thoms) singing one song each.

While I'd been fairly well acquainted with the music from Scott's two cds, I knew very little about Scott himself. That soon changed, as between songs Scott talked about his experiences that inspired the songs, as well as any other random stories that came to mind. (Ever wonder how Scott and Megan Hilty met? It was at Shoshana Bean's Rosh Hashanah party. They were on the same team for charades, and came in last place. Apparently Megan's really bad at it.)

I really loved the simplistic arrangement of all the songs, using just a piano, and I found myself paying much more attention to the lyrics than I had before. Unfortunately, due to our viewing angle, I could only see Scott's back as he sang, but the emotions were still clear in his voice.

Much of the humor throughout the night came from Scott's interactions with the guest performers, who all seemed ready to give him a hard time. While talking about the original version of "Let Love Begin," Tracie described it as a Zoloft commercial: "He's like, 'This song is about coming out of depression!' I was like, 'I know. I could tell. Obviously.'"

Other hilarious highlights included Eden confronting Scott about not being asked back to his London concerts, Jenna challenging Scott's reasoning for her not being on his cds yet (he said it was because she was in LA - she told him there are planes), and then Megan oh-so-helpfully pointing out that she and Eden had been in LA, but flew to NY to record their songs.

Of course, each of the guests gave great vocal performances as well. As soon as I'd heard Scott was doing a concert in LA I knew I'd go, regardless of who else was there, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited about the guests once they were announced! I was especially excited about Jenna, since I missed seeing her as Nessa by a matter of days when she left the LA production, so I was glad to finally see her in something.

I could probably go on and on mentioning different things I liked from throughout the night, but instead I'll leave you with three videos I recorded from the concert: Megan singing "The Dance," Eden singing "Please Don't Let Me Go," and Jenna singing "Soar." Enjoy!