Oh you know how Sundays are. A time to try to address all the to-do lists of your personal life.
Work after vacation is always characterized by 'catch-up'. Posts have been less frequent this week than the previous one when I wasn't even at a real computer. And I have begun to look forward to September's social responsibilities, like GT12 semi-annual Social Distortion show (9/29/06) and our family's visit in two weeks to see 'Wicked'.
So, imagine my amusement to find a post from one of the sites already linked (below) that brings together Wicked and The War on Terror.
Johann Hari notes the London opening of Wicked this week:
[the show begins to give] flashbacks to [The Wicked Witch of The West's] childhood. As she waded through the insults (it ain’t easy being green) and bullies, [TWWotW]gradually realised that Oz was not the Paradise its citizens endlessly, brainlessly chant about.
No – it is a Technicolor tyranny. The Wizard is a dictator, who turns the people against Elphaba because "the way to bring people together is to give them a really terrible enemy.”. She was, in reality, a freedom fighter trying to rescue the people of Oz, turned into an Emanuel Goldstein for the Yellow Brick Road. Confronted with his crimes, the Wizard insists: "[You can call me] a traitor or liberator/ Is one a crusader or ruthless invader?/ It's all in which label is able to persist." It’s not a great musical – the tunes are pretty forgettable – but just go and savour the bleak political resonance.
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