Wicked

About a year ago, Bon gave me the music from Wicked, the current hugely-popular broadway play. A delightful semi-prequal to The Wizard of Oz, the gist of the story is that the good witch and the wicked witch are actually college- roommates-turned-friends and the talented and good hearted but very naive "wicked" witch is framed by the wizard. The music is fun to listen to with interesting lyrics and creative word-usage (which both seriously appeal to me), and our kids fell in love with it. They like it so much that someone is constantly singing from the score, and I actually took the CD out of the van and hid it a while back to try to turn off the perpetual soundtrack (which was in vain).

Kyle and I have been talking for months about how fun it would be to take the family to see it "some day," but we missed it in Denver and certainly weren't going to L.A. or New York any time soon. Wait! London is a big city with broadway plays; big grin! So when we were trying to figure out what to do for Jessica's birthday (seeing that we hadn't really been here long enough for her to have a group of new bosom buddies to invite over), going to the play was the natural solution. Twist my arm about that far...

Jess was very "ho hum" about her birthday and agreed ahead of time that a family party would be just fine this year, consigning herself in advance to the lameness of it all. On her birthday, after wading through a huge box of nothing but wadded copies of the ticket stubs and then finally realizing what the papers meant, she simply sat in shocked silence. Then the room erupted with Jess in the center of five children, all of them shouting and jumping up and down. Now that was good reaction!

Then the waiting began. Since the play was the following Friday, five whole days later, the children spent the week "not being able to wait another second" and "barely able to stand it."

When party night did finally arrive, we all dressed up and rode the tube into London--quite a production in and of itself that time on a Friday night. To add to the London-ness of the experience, we were actually approached by a pan handler who called Kyle "gov-nuh."

After we arrived at the theater and found our seats, the children were barely able to sit still with anticipation, but then they sat in amazement through the whole production, enormous grins on their faces and oohs and aahs when something was portrayed differently than they expected. Eryn even sat still for most of the 3 1/2 hours; that's saying a LOT. (It's rumored that even the biggest kids in the party were spellbound, and apparently one of them even teared up from excitement over all the coolness and then bawled like a baby during "Because I Knew You.") The play definitely didn't disappoint!

Afterward, I asked a very nice random lady to take our picture. When she asked if it was a special occasion and we told her it was Jessica's birthday, she said that her son played the main flying monkey, Chistery, and that if we hung around she would introduce us. I don't think Jess could have grinned any bigger as she was ushered over to the stage door to have her picture taken with one of the cast as an added birthday bonus.


Dragging into the house at 1 a.m., everyone was still singing, talking about their favorite part, etc. What am I saying? They still are!

Happy fourteenth birthday, Jess Honey! Thanks for letting us come to your party!!!