Student Blog: Broadway's Longevity

With Wicked celebrating its 20th anniversary on Broadway earlier this week, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the longevity of Broadway shows and how productions with this longevity can truly define a generation. Although Wicked was not the first Broadway show I saw—that was Mary Poppins when I was 6, my first time seeing Wicked will forever be a core memory. 

You might think this is because of how fantastic the show is, the incredible music Stephen Schwartz composed that defined a new genre of musical theater, or how so many pairs of best friends in theater describe themselves as like Glinda and Elphaba. But no, my first time seeing Wicked was not a positive one. In fact, I barely remember it. 

I was eight years old when I first saw Wicked. I was with my mom and our cousins and we had seats in the orchestra (This is an important detail). I was excited to see the show—even at such a young age, I already loved going to see shows with my family—but did not know anything about the plot, songs, or any tech elements of the show. If you know the show, specifically how it begins, you might be able to figure out where I’m going with this. 

For those of you who don’t know the show or just need a refresher, the show begins with a giant mechanical dragon roaring and flashing above the audience, with help from members of the ensemble (dressed as flying monkeys, of course) who then appear and fly over the audience. 

Suffice it to say that at just eight years old, this was…mildly terrifying for me. In fact, I was so scared by this that I barely remember any of the rest of the show: I remember being terrified at the dragon and the flying monkeys, and that’s about it. Of course, as I got older I became obsessed with songs from the soundtrack (as so many theater kids do), but I didn’t remember the beautiful spectacle that the show truly is. 

I didn’t get a chance to see this production again until summer 2022, when I was in Boston reuniting with one of my best friends and we went to see it together. The thrill I got when the overture began was the same as every time I’ve listened to the cast recording since first seeing the show ten years ago. And this time, I wasn’t scared. I was simply drawn in by the cast’s storytelling and, most notably, Glinda and Elphaba’s friendship. This struck an especially poignant chord for my friend and me, since we were reuniting for the first time in over three years and we knew it would be the last time we saw each other for a while. As you might expect, For Good made us both incredibly emotional. 

The beauty of a show like Wicked is that it is truly timeless. I saw Wicked for a third time with my parents just a week ago as part of its 20th-anniversary celebration, and For Good once again left both my mom and me in tears. The fact that a show like Wicked can have such an emotional impact across generations proves that the longevity of Broadway shows as a whole should not and cannot be underestimated. As someone who’s grown up a theater lover, I appreciate the fact that Wicked—and so many other shows—have been on Broadway for as long as I’ve been alive, and sometimes even longer. I like to think about the fact that if I have kids someday, maybe they’ll grow to love the shows I’ve grown up with as much as I do.

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