The Inexperienced Women are making excellent.
3 girls who’ve starred on Broadway as Elphaba in “Wicked” picked up Tony nominations on Tuesday.
Shoshana Bean, who inhabited the function for a hour founding in 2005, was once nominated as best possible featured actress for “Hell’s Kitchen,” during which she performs a tough-minded unmarried mom making an attempt to give protection to her adolescent daughter from the enticements of the road. (That is her 2d Tony nomination — she was once additionally nominated in 2022 for “Mr. Saturday Night.”)
Eden Espinosa, who succeeded Bean as Elphaba in 2006, was once nominated as best possible prominent actress for enjoying an artistically and sexually adventurous painter in “Lempicka.”
And Lindsay Mendez, who turned into Elphaba in 2013, scored a nomination as best possible featured actress for portraying a hard-drinking novelist on this season’s accident revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” (Mendez already has one Tony, for her portrayal of Carrie Pipperidge in a 2018 revival of “Carousel.”)
Who’s Elphaba? Smartly, “Wicked,” a musical in accordance with a copy by way of Gregory Maguire, is an imagined again tale for the Sinister Witch of the West, and Elphaba is that persona. (Reconsidering her unedited wickedness is the topic of the musical.) Her title is derived from the phonetic initials of L. Frank Baum, who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”; her pores and skin is inexperienced as a nod to the golf green make-up old by way of Margaret Hamilton in “The Wizard of Oz,” the much-loved movie adaptation of Baum’s copy.
“Wicked” has been operating effectively for see you later, with such a lot of firms, and with juicy prominent roles for 2 younger girls, that it now seems at the résumés of many musical theater performers.
The actress enjoying Elphaba wishes a weighty belt; her iconic track is “Defying Gravity.” The function was once originated on Broadway in 2003 by way of Idina Menzel, who received a Tony for her paintings, and who is anticipated to go back to Broadway someday within the not-too-distant time with “Redwood,” a pristine musical a couple of lady and, smartly, timber. (The musical had a manufacturing previous this hour at L. a. Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.)
The alternative primary persona in “Wicked” is Glinda (historically described as a excellent witch, despite the fact that once more, your mileage might range); that function requires a prime soprano and was once originated by way of Kristin Chenoweth, who may be hoping to go back quickly to Broadway — she is starring in a pristine musical referred to as “The Queen of Versailles,” tailored from the movie, that can have an preliminary manufacturing on the Emerson Colonial in Boston this summer time. (A 2023 Glinda, McKenzie Kurtz, is lately starring in any other pristine Broadway musical, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” moment Katie Rose Clarke, who had 3 free tenures as Glinda on Broadway, is featured on this season’s revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.”)
In the meantime, “Wicked” is heading for the weighty display screen, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda. The primary of the movie’s both parts is scheduled to be excused in November, as a Thanksgiving weekend film.
