Wicked
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Look. I was a Wicked virgin before this. And no, that doesn’t mean what you think it means.
It means I had never read the book, seen the stage musical, or seen the movie, though I had seen approximately six million versions of the “holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity” meme, and Cynthia Erivo’s green-point’d index finger held by Ariana Grande’s spectral hand.
The most I had listened to was Defying Gravity—a stellar song by any measure—over and over. By listen Number One Thousand, I felt that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen Wicked; I already knew it in my heart. She defies gravity! She’s not supposed to defy gravity. The musical obviously ends after the song does.