The Goat, or Who Is Dillamond?
Dissecting the Wicked trailer, looking at some newly announced shows, and talking the state of Off-Broadway musicals.
Before we get into the dissection of the Wicked trailer, I want to give a shout-out to all the HATERS who have been asking me for over a year now, “How do you think Ariana’s gonna do? Are you worried?” No, actually! Never have been! Some of us have had the 13 cast recording featurette in our YouTube favorites since middle school, and some of us haven’t.
This week was upfront week which, for those of you not in the marketing world, is when the major entertainment companies hold celebrities at gunpoint to taut their upcoming programming to advertisers in order to sell commercial spots. On Monday, NBCUniversal, who held their upfront in person and streamed to those of us who neeeeeed to start their week with a Dunkin’ iced coffee and egg white bites on their parents’ couch, announced a special first look at Wicked. Reader, I screamed. Then, they specified this treat was only for those in the room and they blacked out my screen for two minutes and 30 seconds. Jail! “This will be available to everyone later this week.” I don’t care, I’m not everyone! I learned every word to “No Good Deed” during my lunchtime one day at summer camp in 2006!
Later that day, we were given a promotional spot which spliced footage from the movie with the cast and director Jon M. Chu talking about how much the piece means to them, and we FINALLY saw some of the fabled Ariana audition that changed Jon’s life. I thought the footage looked fine and seeing Ariana cry over her casting (“I love her I’ll take such good care of her” she’s so Strasberg) was cute but the question persisted: what’s going on with Doctor Dillamond? We had a full cast announcement and word that BOTH films were in the can before we heard anything about the role. Rumors first swirled that maybe Dillamond was gone and that Keala Settle’s Miss Coddle would replace him, then Bowen Yang confirmed on a late night show that Dillamond WAS in the movie, played at the time by a puppet, but still no casting. James Corden’s name was tossed around, as was Idina Menzel’s, before we learned he was to be voiced by Peter Dinklage. I was down with this casting! He sang adequately in Cyrano and he can obviously act. But we had no footage, nothing to visualize.
Then on Tuesday we were told that the next day we would be getting an official trailer and let me tell you… We got Dillamond.
No you don’t understand I’m obSESSED. His silly little suit and his silly little glasses. Like this is bringing me back to November 2019 when I was really in my Cats bag… Movie musicals are made to showcase beautiful young women and CGI animals. And beautiful young women are present! Ariana gets some good line delivery and a cheeky high kick to shut the naysayers up and we get a soundbite of “Popular” which all Arianators have already been listening to for eleven years as a bonus track on Yours Truly. Cynthia Erivo does what she does best, which is sing (we hear some “Defying Gravity” which we already heard in the Super Bowl teaser trailer), and something about her colored contact lenses and fake green freckles has transfixed me. Jonathan Bailey hot, next question…
I have heard complaints largely about two things online:
The color grading looks like shit.
I think the most impressive part of this movie is the practical sets that we’ve been seeing in photos for over a year now and in my opinion they do shine in this trailer but I get the desire for a spin-off piece of Oz media to go full technicolor. Gotta be real though it’s not actively ugly to me so I’ll overlook it. :)
They give the whole movie away in this three and a half minute trailer.
I didn’t see a damn shot of “One Short Day” so as far as I’m concerned I haven’t seen ANYTHING.
Being serious though they do give away much of the plot of act one of Wicked which is presumably this entire first film, but what do you go to Wicked for? Plot??? It’s a MUSICAL. Grow up. You go for the song and dance numbers! I am fully in on this movie don’t come to me with your skepticism.
If there’s one thing about me it’s that I love a movie adaptation of a Broadway musical and we don’t have a ton in the works right now. We have SO many in development hell (Once on this Island, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Little Shop of Horrors, Be More Chill, Beautiful, Shucked, Big River, Follies, On Your Feet, Spring Awakening, and of course Sunset Boulevard, not to mention remakes of Oliver!, Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, Flower Drum Song, The King and I, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat from Jon M. Chu), but beyond that, we have Girl from the North Country in pre-production and Merrily We Roll Along filming for like… 17 more years? All we have in the NEAR future, besides for Wicked and Wicked: For Good (you forgot that was the title, huh?), is JLo in Kiss of the Spider Woman, which, she announced on Live with Kelly and Mark this week, has wrapped filming! Jennifer Lopez they can never make me hate you (no matter how hard they try), thank you for keeping the art of the vanity project alive.
Speaking of vanity projects, let’s move onto some show announcements we’ve gotten in recent days, starting with the Broadway debuts of George Clooney and Robert Downey, Jr. and while they battle for the 2025 Tony for Best Actor in a Play, their plays (Good Night, and Good Luck and McNeal, respectively) are in a contest for most boring show and I fear I am losing. I read the blurbs: the former show is an adaptation of Clooney’s film directorial debut about Edward R. Murrow, someone who my parents definitely know and I definitely don’t care about; while the latter show is a new play about an author and A.I., or something. My mom would follow RDJ to the ends of the earth but the Vivian Beaumont Theater might be a step too far. Lincoln Center announced, in addition to McNeal, an off-Broadway play called N/A that is a thinly-veiled (like razor thin) Nancy Pelosi-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez play, starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe.
To be fair they definitely are not going for subtlety. I sent this picture to a group chat and a friend remarked the ad makes it look “like they’re fucking”, which would a) explain why Holland Taylor took the role and b) probably be more exciting than the eventual output! Of these three plays, this one is the one I’m most likely to see because I love Ana and, more importantly, I support Women’s Stories (even if that woman is Nancy Pelosi).
We also got confirmation on two musicals I speculated about in my last post: Death Becomes Her (in previews in Chicago now and opening this weekend) and Maybe Happy Ending. At the time, all I knew about it was that it was to star Darren Criss, but now I know it is about robots who fall in love when one asks to borrow the other one’s charger. Cute! Unfortunately, it is the early frontrunner for the Worst Artwork award (currently held by The Notebook).
Like this is impossibly ugly to me. They chose an APPLE WATCH charger???
Anyway, you might be asking: Who is Helen J. Shen? You’d be right to ask! She is currently in The Lonely Few off-Broadway which I hope to see… maybe next week? Previously seen in Teeth (we’ll come back to that) and a regional production of Sunset Boulevard in Connecticut. She is also Andrew Barth Feldman’s girlfriend. Power couple! He will be seen this Summer off-Broadway in Little Shop of Horrors opposite Sarah Hyland. I would like to do a two show day of these two!!! Excited for them both I like when young people succeed in realms that are not mine. :)
Back to Teeth, one of my favorite musicals of this past season. They just announced Teeth will be moving to New World Stages for an open-ended off-Broadway run and I am THRILLED not only to see it again but also to pretty handily ensure this will get a cast recording. I viscerally need “Shame in My Body” on repeat. I’ve been saying off-Broadway is doing musicals way better than Broadway is and Teeth is an example of that and I actually think it should never ever come to Broadway and more producers need to learn that that is a fine and even admirable thing to say! I hope this runs for a while but unfortunately I think New World Stages is sort of a musical killer (in recent years it has opened and closed ¡Americano!, Rock and Roll Man, and A Sign of the Times).
I just saw Three Houses at Signature Theatre, another example of a show that probably would not hit it big on the Main Stem, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Dave Malloy’s mind is so wacky that while his melodies are not always super listenable, I’m always rapt anyway! This is, get this, a retelling of the Three Little Pigs told through the framing device of a pub open mic night about people struggling with OCD during the pandemic. Only Dave!
This stands in contrast to the last Broadway show I saw, The Outsiders, which is a story everyone already knows done in a way that does not necessarily add anything new and I mean that in the best possible way! The songs are palatable, the cast is adept, and the choreo is fun (especially the rumble). This is Broadway fare. If Illinoise cannot win Best Musical I would be FINE with Outsiders taking it. All I have left to see in that race is Suffs but I don’t want to put a dime in Hillary Clinton’s pocket. :/ What’s a girl to do…
I don’t even know where to fit in my thoughts on the upcoming Encores! season but I swear if Maleah Joi Moon doesn’t take a damn break from Hell’s Kitchen to sing “Your Daddy’s Son” I’m gonna have some words.