(Kristin Chenoweth) and Elphaba - Camera Obscura: Feminism ...

40 • Camera Obscura
F-ing incredible. OMG. . . . It sounds so freaking effortless.
The obsessing was definitely worth it guys.
— BelleOf TheBand, witchesofoz.com, April 2006
Near the end of the 9 January 2005 Broadway performance of
Wicked, Glinda the Good Witch (Jennifer Laura Thompson)
floated twenty feet above the stage in her steel orb “bubble,”
ready to accept her position as the new governor of Oz. Fiyero,
now the Scarecrow (Joey McIntyre), knocked on a trapdoor
in the Ger shwin Theatre’s stage floor to summon Elphaba, the
Wicked Witch of the West (Shoshana Bean), who had faked her
own death, to come out of hiding. Instead of the trap door opening
and Elphaba/Bean’s head appearing, though, a different
actress, Idina Menzel, walked gingerly from the wings onto the
stage, decked out in a red Adidas warm-up suit and red sneakers.
The actress, who originated the role of Elphaba, had been injured
during the previous day’s performance when the elevator beneath
the stage into which she “melts” dropped early, and she fell and
broke a rib. While few stage injuries are newsworthy, this one got
coverage in the New York Times and by the Associated Press in part
because Menzel, who had achieved considerable fame in the role,
was to have appeared in it for the last time on 9 January.
Those in the audience who had come especially to see
Menzel’s final performance that evening may not have seen her
play Elphaba, but they got what they paid for. As Jesse McKinley
wrote in the New York Times, “She wasn’t in costume, she wasn’t in
makeup, and she wasn’t even in character.” But as soon as Menzel
entered from upstage left, the audience went wild. McKinley
described a standing ovation “like few you’ve ever seen: a screaming,
squealing, flashbulb-popping explosion that was equal parts
ecstatic hello and tearful goodbye.” The performance was completely
halted by “this outpouring of love,” with only a few lines of
dialogue and a half verse of a song remaining in the show. 1 Finally,
after much grinning and stammering from the actors, Thompson
picked up her cue, “Fellow Ozians,” and then shouted, “I love you,
Idina Menzel!” The crowd erupted again, but soon Thompson and
Menzel continued, spoke their lines and sang the last few phrases
of the show together in harmony. 2