r/wicked

The Erkel Színház Wicked directed by Szente Vajk on Saturday in Szeged, Hungary heavily relies on AI! It's outraging, even so by the fact that according to media articles the opening night was visited by no one else but Stephen Schwartz who is on the first picture.
The broschure says the artwork was done by Kentaur and Toth Kazmer, so I am crediting them so the post can remain, but look at that seemingly AI use! What do you think? I saw other posts here mentioning this, but it is worse than I imagined!

Photos are from Facebook, publicly awailable, not mine. https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=wicked%20szeged

(SPOILERS)

So the Witch of the West dies in pretty much every Oz story telling, including the original Wicked novel. Her deadly weakness being water is one of her fundamental character aspects in all incarnations.

Then the Wicked stage musical and then movie came along and showed the water weakness to be a hoax and Elphaba faked her death. This did well to lessen the melancholy brought by seeing our engaging main character supposedly die. Made the ending more “pleasant” overall, leaving the audience with a bittersweet hope.

But how do we think the show/movie would have sat with audiences—and even resonated theme and message-wise—if Elphaba truly died?

Imo, that would have made the themes heavier and all the more tragic to the point where the general audience probably would have become more depressed than inspired… I know that some media is deliberately made heart-wrenching so as to truly drive home the depth of a message or theme, but in this case, I don’t think it would have worked for the musical’s favor.

Nessa's death and Fiyero's sacrifice were very important events for Glinda.

Fiyero leaving Glinda at the wedding was an eye opening moment for Glinda but she has two more major wake up calls that really push her to see the world and to take a long hard look at herself and her choices.

When Nessa is murdered Glinda begins to see the consequence of her choice, but when Elphaba comes she tries to claim that the house falling on Nessa was an accident because she didn't wanna face the truth, that it was because of a choice she made. She was hurt and angry when she told MM to use Nessa to trap Elphaba but she didn't think that choice through, she didn't think how her choice would affect other people and this was another big lesson for Glinda to learn, choices have consequences and her choices can and do affect other people. That's why Nessa's death was such a huge shock and why it was another eye opening moment for her.

When Elphaba calls her out on trying to claim it was an accident Glinda starts to face the truth it causes Glinda to start to doubt her choice to support the Wizard and MM. She starts to think maybe Elphaba was right about them. She starts to let the truth sink in, that it wasn't an accident and that MM murdered Nessa to lure Elphaba out of hiding and Glinda helped them do it.

Glinda is still angry at Elphaba and she still sees her as the reason Fiyero left her, Elphaba took him away from her so she starts that fight with her because of that. Glinda is taking out her anger on Elphaba because she sees her as the reason she didn't get what she wanted.

Then the Galeforce comes and they capture Elphaba, this is the second time Glinda sees the consequence of her choice. She never meant for anyone to get hurt, she never meant for them to capture Elphaba and it's another eye opening moment, she sees that her choice helped them do this, it put Elphaba in danger.

Then Fiyero comes and he threatens her life to make the Galefore release Elphaba. Glinda is shocked and she is upset by this but then she sees the truth, she sees why he threatened her.

She finally sees what real love is, it's sacrifice, it's putting someone else first, it's putting their safety and well being before yourself. Glinda realizes that love isn't about social status, and she realized being popular doesn't mean you're loved. Elphaba was hated but she had someone who loved her enough to die for her and Glinda was popular but she didn't have anyone who actually loved her.

She realizes that what she has isn't love, it's admiration. She realizes that the only love she has in her life is Elphaba, that friendship, that love between them is all she needs to feel valued, to feel worthy.

She also understands why Fiyero did everything he did, why he chose Elphaba, why he threatened her life. She understands why Elphaba chose Fiyero over her, love. They chose each other because they loved each other. When she finally understood this she let go of the hurt and anger she felt over not being chosen.

When Fiyero surrenders to the Galeforce rather than hurt her she sees another act of love, Fiyero wasn't in love with her but he did care about her and he would rather than die than hurt her. When the Galeforce starts to beat Fiyero, Glinda tries to get them to stop but they won't listen to her and when Fiyero is taken away Glinda sees another consequence of her choice and she sees the truth about the Wizard. Fiyero had to sacrifice himself because Elphaba was captured she was captured because Nessa was murdered, Nessa was murdered because of her choice. It's another consequence of her choice she feels guilt about and it's another eye opening moment for her. The Wizard and MM killed one person and were about to kill another, both were people she cared about and all of these events were what led to Glinda popping her bubble and seeing the truth.

Thoughts?

It was a magical experience to finally see the show live (I went on the 15th). All the performers are incredibly talented, Stéphanie Schlesser as Elphaba blew me away, especially with Defying Gravity.

What was a bit of a disappointment is that the production felt like they were trying to recreate the movie on stage instead of the actual musical. They also very clearly used AI for the propaganda posters against Elphie and the background, which left a bad taste in my mouth as I am heavily against AI. I don’t know whether they are going to change this when they start playing the show in theater in December, I really hope they will.

That’s the wrong uniform. Presumably Fiyero ripped it in the middle of the woods and gave it to Chistery, but its from the other human uniform. Either he was carrying around pieces of his uniform that were ripped off when he was tortured as a human, he raided his own closet, or Chistery flew all the way back to EC to get him that missing ceremonial jacket in the last slide to conceal his note.

So Chistery brings Elphaba the note from Fiyero telling he was alive and to go through with the plan and I realized Chistery must have known Fiyero was the scarecrow because Fiyero would have had to give him that note to take to Elphaba. Kinda random thing but i thought of it and wanted to share. Thoughts?

Here’s her singing Poor Unfortunate Souls at D23.

My bf got jt for my birthday after I couldn’t stop talking about this tiara for weeks😆😍 absolutely love this tiara! Not an exact replica but still beautiful!💕

I've gotten to the scene where Cherrystone's men are pulling the boats out of Glinda's barn and it says the following:

"Even more important, the grade from the barnyard to lake would accommodate a launch. A clear access presented itself across the drive, through the wildflower meadow and down the pastures, neatly avoiding the ha-ha and (mercifully) Virus Skepticle's bentlebranch folly in honor of freshwater mermaids."

1. What the hell is the ha-ha??

2. Who is Virus Skepticle and what happened with him, the bentlebranches, and the mermaids? Did I miss something??

So the film added two new songs. There's no Place Like Home for Elphaba, and Girl in the Bubble, for Glinda.

Personally, I don't really care for these songs, but I always imagined another duet between them.

And the song should have a premise similar to this one. It's a deleted song from Frozen where Anna and Elsa sing about how happy they are to see each other again for the 1st half, then argue in the 2nd half. I think if there was to be an additional duet for Elphaba & Glinda in For Good, it should be similar to this. Maybe it could happen when the witches are in Glinda's room. Around this scene. Before Wonderful. But I guess that means excluding Glinda from Wonderful if they are arguing.

But I fear the song theme might be too similar to What is This Feeling from Act 1.

What do you think?

Idk - just something I worked up this evening… I just wanted to capture Elphaba smiling. Cynthia Erivo’s big grin makes Elphie so cute.

FOR GOOD SPOILERS!

The gentle but mournful singing cutting to Elphaba screaming + Glinda crying...I mean, shit. Dorothy looking so happy while running back to the others makes me sad too, because Elphie truly did have it out for her, and she was just an outside with the whole 'Wicked Witch' propaganda thrust upon her...