Totally Wicked!

On October 10th a group of twenty friends and family went to see Wicked in Denver. It was a fabulous night that started at the Cheesecake Factory and ended in a standing ovation for the cast. We thoroughly enjoyed the performance despite the fact that Elpheba was played by the "stand-by."

Some of our group

About a week later my friend Candice called to see if we had seen the performance and I said we had. She was looking to get tickets for her daughter's birthday. The website makes it very hard to find open dates, so I suggested that she called the Box Office directly. She called me a few minutes later to tell me that the were sold out except for a few seats with obstructed views. She then asked if I had heard about the lottery. I hadn't. She proceeded to explain that 2 1/2 hours before each performance they hold a drawing for 20 tickets. All of these tickets are GREAT seats and only cost $25 compared to nearly $100. WOW! We made plans to head down with our families on Tuesday night to see if we could get tickets for her and her daughter. I couldn't get Wicked off my mind and suggested to my SIL, Suzi, that we try and get tickets on Saturday night. Unfortunately, there were about 60 other people there on Saturday and our names weren't called.

All day Tuesday I thought about how exciting it would be to have our names called and surely between 12 of us we could get 4-6 seats. We thought our chances would be even better with it being a Tuesday night that was cold and rainy. There were still at least 60 people who had the same idea, but weren't we happy when the first name called was Michael Johnson?! We listened as 9 other names were called (each person was allowed to buy two tickets, so only 10 were called). Not one of these names did we recognize. We were disappointed to say the least. We had hoped to get at least 4. We had already seen the show so we insisted that Candice take Michael's tickets. We discussed it back and forth for quite awhile outside the theater. We really wanted her to take the tickets and enjoy the show and she didn't know if she could enjoy the show knowing she had taken Michael's tickets. The man who drew the names then approached us and said that there were a couple of seats in the Mezzanine that had opened up and we should head to the box office. When we got to the box office there were four tickets left in the Mezzanine two together and two single seats. Candice bought the two together and gave me back Michael's tickets. I called Suzi and told her to get ready and come down to see the show. After the call I started to feel the same way Candice had felt. I looked at Michael. He said with a smile he was fine and he wanted us to take the tickets, but something continued to nag at me. So in a last minute decision we made the show sell out. We bought the two single tickets for Suzi and myself and Jacob and Michael took the tickets Michael justly WON. These two tickets just happened to be on the second row. When the boys were seated Jacob called and said they wouldn't feel good about taking the seats unless we agreed to use them during the second act. Suzi and I went to the second row for the second act and it was AMAZING. The costumes were beautiful, the facial expressions (especially from Glinda) were fabulous and we were able to see that many actors spit A LOT.

Overall, what a great night. We went to the Stage Door afterwards and saw many of the actors (no Elpheba) and had our picture taken with the Wizard, AKA Larry (Richard Kline) from Three's Company.

Our picture with the Wizard, Richard Kline, aka Larry, Jack Tripper's friend