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'Wicked' has a kind streak

By: Mark Meszoros
Entertainment@News-Herald.com
Lottery will allow a lucky few to score great seats for hit musical on the cheap

Something decidedly "Wicked" this way comes. But if you didn't snatch up tickets for the tour of the hugely popular Broadway musical about the witches of Oz when they went on sale in April, your chances of seeing the show during its long-awaited three-week Cleveland run aren't good.
But they aren't nil, either.

The only sure thing would be to score one of the handful of standing-room-only tickets remaining for many of the 24 performances. However, if you insist upon having a seat and are feeling lucky, you might be in luck.

Each show will be preceded by a lottery for 24 to 26 seats in the first two rows of Playhouse Square Center's State Theatre for that performance. The lottery has been done in other cities and is similar to the one that precedes performances of "Rent," which has played in Cleveland several times.

"They just wanted to give people a chance to see the show who might (otherwise) not be able to," says Kelly Luecke, marketing and public relations manager for Playhouse Square Center.

Those interested should be at the State Theatre ticket windows two hours before show time. Thirty minutes later, names will be drawn, and those chosen will be able to buy up to two tickets.

"Really, it's 12 or 13 people if all those people buy two tickets," Luecke points out. If you are chosen, you'll have to cough up only $25 (cash only) per ticket. That's a deal considering that the priciest tickets went for $82.50.

The amount of people who enter the lottery varies from city to city. "Some venues have had hundreds, and some get a couple of handfuls," Luecke says. "We think it's going to be pretty popular in Cleveland just because there's a lot of people who wanted to buy tickets for the show."

That may be an understatement.

A throng showed up the morning of April 28, a Friday, when Playhouse Square began selling tickets at 8 - two hours before they were to be available at other Tickets.com outlets and over the phone and Web.

"I know at our office we had about 900 people standing in line," she says. "We weren't surprised ... because 'Wicked' is a very popular show ... but it was pretty amazing to see that many people in our lobbies winding around to get tickets."

The last show that generated that kind of buzz at the box office was the tour of Disney's "The Lion King," which played Cleveland in summer 2003. However, that show's run was twice as long as that of "Wicked," meaning there were a lot more tickets to go around.

"We got ('Wicked') for the maximum time allowed," Luecke says.
Based on the 1995 novel of the same name from Gregory Maguire, "Wicked" tells the "untold" story of the witches from "The Wizard of Oz."

Long before Dorothy finds the magical land of Oz, two girls - one smart, fiery, misunderstood and born with emerald-green skin, the other beautiful, ambitious and very popular - become unlikely friends before growing up to be the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch.
The show opened on Broadway in October 2003 and currently is Broadway's top-grossing show.

"If every musical had the brain, the heart and the courage of 'Wicked,' " Time magazine wrote, "Broadway really would be a magical place."

While the show scored a whopping 10 nominations for Tony Awards in 2004, it won only three, losing the best musical and other key categories to "Avenue Q." Best musical or not, people love it. Counted among them is Luecke, who saw it in New York. "I think the main reason it's so popular is it's based on a story everybody knows," she says. "It's definitely not 'The Wizard of Oz,' but it's funny, it's dramatic, it's touching ... . It's just fantastic."

If you aren't a lucky lottery winner and decide to pass on standing to see the show, you likely haven't missed your only chance to see "Wicked" in Cleveland. How soon it can be conjured back is unknown, however. Says Luecke, "Due to the popularity, we would love to bring the show back for a return engagement and hop to do so in the near future."