Mary and I popped down to New York to see one of my west coast compadres and to catch a show with him and his wife (no names...protecting the innocent :-).

The Trip

We originally wanted to take Amtrak from Wells to NYC, but it was far too expensive and would have been a very long ride. We opted to drive to CT on Friday, stay overnight and head into NYC on the train on Saturday. We stayed at the Trumbull Marriott, which turned out to be a very nice hotel with very modern rooms, extremely friendly and capable staff and a well-prepared breakfast buffet. The train ride in was incident-free and the Washington Jefferson Hotel (right near the theatre district) had equally as capable staff and very decent accommodations. I highly recommend both establishments if you find yourself in need of respite near either locale.

The drive down on Friday was extremely tiring, but the jaunt back on Sunday was as pleasant as a 3-4hour drive up through New England can get.

The Show

We saw Wicked, which is prequel and adaptation of the story of the Wizard of Oz (subtitle is "The untold story of the witches of Oz". To briefly summarize it, the story starts at the point where the Wicked Witch of the West has just died with the Good Witch Glinda appearing and being asked to explain how the Wicked Witch got to be wicked. The writers take some liberty with the original Oz elements (as the two become intertwined pretty quickly), but did a decent job creating the backstory.

I found the singing talents of the current actors playing Glinda & Fyiero (full cast here) to be mediocre at best (we heard better singers at the Stardust Diner after the show and the writers definitely did not stretch themselves story- or dialogue-wise. The technical/stage crew did a phenomenal job with the set, costumes, transitions and effects and the orchestra was spot on.

The real star, however, was Dee Roscioli, who played the Wicked Witch (or was she, in fact, truly wicked after all?). Her singing and acting talents absolutely made up for the performances of the other two leads. If you do plan to trek to the city to see the show, try to get there while she is still in it.

Overall, it was an entertaining musical and a fun, whirlwind of a weekend (as we also took in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and ate a truly scrumptious dinner at SUPPER).