All About Musicals

I know I wasn’t the only one who stayed up on Wednesday night to watch the Los Angeles cast of Wicked perform on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Wow! I just can’t get enough of Wicked.

I believe that Eden Espinosa was Elphaba and Megan Hilty was G(a)linda. (After further research I found those are correct.)

Eden has such a powerful voice– she can sing pretty deeply, too! She does well with making the songs her own– the woman we saw last Saturday on the tour (Victoria Matlock) also did that, but she did it with singing– I’ve found that Eden does it with speaking some lines that are normally sung. She was great, though! Very passionate.

Megan Hilty was unlike any Glinda I’ve seen, but different isn’t necessarily bad. She started out singing really nasally, and though I know Glinda is supposed to have a “teeny cutesy-type” voice, the beginning of the song was a bit too nasal for my liking (particularly the “peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe” line). I actually liked when she said “But of course I’ll rise above it” with a breathy, airy voice. After that line she grew on me, though, and she’s a natural when it comes to acting “Galinda-fied.”

Aside from the energy being a bit low, which I understand was probably because they were saving their best for a performance later that night, they were both wonderful and very enjoyable, as was the entire cast on that small piece of stage at “The Tonight Show.”

What did you think? And who’s your favorite Elphaba and/or Glinda that you’ve seen?

Technorati Tags: Wicked, Wicked the Musical, Eden Espinosa, Victoria Matlock, Megan Hilty, Elphaba, Glinda, Galinda, G(a)linda, The Tonight Show, Jay Leno, Broadway, Broadway Musicals, Musicals, Musical Theatre, Musical Theater, Broadway Musical

Courtesy: Turbo Tagger