for the second time, I feel...WICKED!

If you haven't seen Wicked, the new(ish) musical now on tour--and in Cleveland until Sunday 7/9--you definitely should try to get a ticket. Even if you don't like musicals. It's a hilariously funny production, but also very emotionally touching at times. In fact, I had goosebumps for at least a third of the show. It was that good.

One might think that having seen the show on Broadway a year-and-a-half ago the tour might be somewhat anticlimactic for me. Absolutely not! There is only one thing I remember from the Broadway production that isn't in the touring one (winged monkeys flying on zip lines over the audience), but that would have been extremely impractical--no, a rigging nightmare--on tour, and I wasn't expecting it. Of course, Joey McIntyre (of NKOTB fame) played Fiero when I saw it the first time, and of course wasn't in this production, but the cast we saw here in the Land of Cleve was still phenomenal; the ovation they got when the audience almost immediately and unanimously rose to its feet was indeed very well deserved.

If you don't have a ticket yet, there's a lottery for maybe a dozen or so pairs of seats that takes place 1 hour before each performance, where the lottery winners are able to buy 2 tickets each for a nominal price, I think $25 each. Otherwise, it's probably pretty much sold out.