day 18

Back to school today. I’m running a bit low on food because I don’t really want to buy anymore sense I’ll be leaving in less than a week. It just means I’ll be eating a lot more yogurt and bananas each morning. Anyway, class today was on extra sensory perception, ESP, where people are aware of things they technically shouldn’t. However, I learned that many of the cases of ESP are simply the effect of conformation bias, which means you remember the things that support your ideas and you disregard or forget the things that don’t. So when people foretell the future, we often remember the famous predictions “seers” make that come true, and we forget the ones that don’t.

I also learned about that sensation you have when you feel like someone’s watching you, so you turn your head around only to find that someone is staring right at you! Don’t be alarmed, there’s a very simple explanation. When you turn your head around suddenly, other people’s eyes are drawn to the movement. So really, they weren’t staring at you. They’re just looking at you now because their sight is drawn to your movement. Glad to clear that up for all the paranoid readers out there.

After class there wasn’t much to do until we went to Wicked tonight. Let me say this right now, we did see the show tonight. I piddled around on my paper for class, which turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I’ve never written a research paper before, and what makes it different from normal papers is, well, the research. Pretty much, you can’t make any claims without something to back it up. Which means you have to read a lot of chapters and journals. Then you have to take the bit you want, but it in your own words, site it in the paper, then write up the reference for the reference page. For every claim you make. This is going to be really hard.

I didn’t want to leave anything to chance tonight, so my group left the dorms an hour and a half before the show started. The tube was crazy busy as it was about 6:00 and rush hour was at its worse, but we made it to the theater, if perhaps a little squished. I forgot to bring my camera to the theater, so I don’t have any pictures there, but it was really beautiful. The Apollo Victoria Theater has two tiers and a lot of seats in each one. The place is huge. It also has these really cool, really big pieces on the ceilings that make you feel like you’re in a clamshell. Our seats were fantastic, three rows back in the second section of seats. We could see the stage perfectly.

And what a stage. The whole thing was decked out in black and grey with ropes and wheels and staircases. There was the huge Clockwork Dragon puppet up above the stage that moved whenever the Witch’s magic was going on on stage. The curtain was a huge map of Oz with the glittering Emerald City in the center. It was just like it was supposed to be.

It all felt almost like a dream. I had dreamed of seeing this show for over three years, and now that I was actually here, if was almost like it wasn’t real. But the curtain finally came up and the show started. As I was already well acquainted with the music I could focus on everything else. I’ve wanted to know the story of the show for a very long time because I’ve heard that it was very different from the book, for which I am grateful because I hated the book both times I read it. I’m just glad to know how the story of the musical goes now, and I like it much better.

Everyone played their part very well. You didn’t really even think they were British until they said things like “can’t” or “dance” because they always used the long “aaaah” sound instead of the American “aaay” sound. So instead of hearing “Dancing through life” I heard “Daaancing through life”. It was fun to hear the difference. Elphaba (the Wicked Witch), was played beautifully. You don’t really get a sense of her character by just listening to the soundtrack, but she’s a very powerful, strong, hardheaded woman. Glinda was simply hilarious and was full of hair flips and ridiculous lines. Madam Morrible was fabulous and nasty. The Wizard had a very Vaudevillian sense to him that made him more entertaining when he was being nice, and all the more despicable when he was being deceptive, which was pretty much the whole time. Boq was Irish, which I loved because he’s such an impish character anyway I thought his Irish accent made it all the more impish (not that I think Irish people are impish, it just fit to this character). The rest of cast was wonderful as well. And the costumes were simply fabulous. The Emerald City costumes were my favorite by far. All the costumes of the different choruses were so different yet they all fit into one set. And even from a distance I could see how detailed they were. I would love to take a walk through that wardrobe department and look at them all up close.

Don’t even bother asking what my favorite song was. There is no competition. Defying Gravity was the most spectacular part of the show. I’ve seen pictures of Elphaba up at the top of the stage with that huge black cape billowing behind her, but it did nothing to prepare me for the moment when it actually happened in real life. It was like all the anticipation and excitement that’s been building for three years culminated into a big ball of happiness and exploded when the big black cape came out. It was simply spectacular.

After the show there was pretty much nothing to do but race back to the dorm and talk the show over with Hayley. After that, I went to sleep, perfectly happy and content.

British word of the day: handcart = stroller, like what you put a baby in.