WICKED!!

I waited almost 7 years...and Saturday I FINALLY did it!! Thanks to Colleen, for getting up at the crack of dawn and logging into get choice tickets, which by the way, anyone who gets up before 9am is a saint in my book and needs to be praised and showered with lots of love and gratitude! How on earth will I ever repay her?

Not only did she score me a ticket, but she got one for herself, her mother, Mark (the ONLY daring male attendee) and my sister Dory! So, Dory drove over on Friday night. She wandered off to bed around midnight....I laid down at 1:00am and was as excited as kid on Christmas Eve. The soundtrack,which I bought the next day after I heard just one public performance by a show choir, was memorized just a few days after it was inserted into my cd player in my car, was playing in my head and my inner voice was belting out each note loud and strong, as David laid there sound alseep. The soundtrack is one of the best I have ever heard. And thanks to the soundtrack I had conjured up what I thought the actual musical was going to be like.

So I sit here two days later....STILL in a WICKED fog!!! Sipping my 4th cup of coffee in my WICKED coffee mug. My mind wanders to replay the scenes, remembering the costuming and set design, and just how REALLY wonderful it really was. I thought I was prepared for it, but, honestly, I wasn't. I sat there, beside Dory with my mouth gaped open and several times I even had to wipe a lone tear from my cheek. You guys knew I was a geek...this just confirms it!

We have been in Cincinnati for almost one year and in all this time, I have never driven downtown all by myself. I have ridden, I know how to get there, and can get you to any destination down there. But, to drive it all by myself was yet another event. Only WICKED could be encouraging enough to get me to do it. There are a lot of people here...so that means lots of cars. There are several major highways, so maneuvering could be challenging for somebody who can't follow road signs. But, I did it! I even managed to get us parked, remembered where we parked and thanks to Dory, we slid right out of the parking garage and, right onto I71N and were headed home in a flash. My biggest fear was getting lost in the plethora of one way streets and going around in circles downtown, and not being able to get home! Not the case!

Colleen had told us if we were planning on buying any souvenirs, we needed to do it prior to the show. The lines during the 15 minute intermission would be long and the items would be picked over when the show ended. Soo, as soon as they opened the lines, I had my ticket torn, and I was up the stairs in a flash with a starry eyed  look from all the wonderful OZ items the OZ Dust Boutique had to offer. When my turn came up, I made my selections and pulled out my ZUMBA money....jokingly, I said, "I danced my butt off to buy this stuff!" Dory joked and said, "Yeah, she's a stripper." The poor sales guy just looked at us. When Dory tried to fix it by saying, "Nah, if she was she'd have all ones." I giggled out loud and started counting out the $5 and $1 dollar bills. The sales man then replied, "Hey, this IS a family show." Grinning, he gladly took just about all of my ZUMBA money.I really didn't buy much....one t shirt for Chelsea, one for me, and a coffee mug.

Or so was the case until during the performance and in the act where Galinda and Elphaba are off to the Emerald City to see the Wizard, and everybody on stage is wearing the Emerald Green Sunglasses.... I HAD TO HAVE THEM! And, during intermission, I darted in the line and bought them, as well as the track jacket! Which I have to Thank David for! Yes, I charged them! I didn't walk away wanting anything. But, maybe to get to see the next show. My souvenir collection is complete! (wellllll, almost.)

It was a bucket list weekend! I marked an item off of it. The only foreseeable problem is that now that I have seen it in Cincinnati, I MUST see it in NY too!! Gotta talk Colleen and Dory, as well as anybody else who wants to tag along into that trip, SOON!

If you get the chance to see....GO, don't pass it up. Even if you don't like musicals, you will like this one. Everybody knows the story of The Wizard of OZ, WICKED shows you what happened before Dorothy dropped in. If I had to give it stars-0 being bad and 10 being fantastic, I would give this one a 100!!