They live in Oak Park just blocks from the el station so we decided to take that downtown which was the best way of doing it. The el dropped us off at Daley Plaza which is only a block away from the theater. Kim was giving me a hard time because I tend to like to be early and we got down there at 1 p.m. so we had about an hour to kill.
Right next to the theater was Girard's popcorn - that popcorn that Oprah raves about so we each got a small bag. It was okay popcorn...the carmel corn was rather tasty but I don't think I need to be shipping it cross country. We had some left over so I placed it in a shopping bag but the people at the door wouldn't let us in the theater with it. We pretty much just shrugged our shoulders and tossed it.
Our seats were up in the balcony which wasn't a terrible place to sit. It's probably best to sit lower than we did to see the shadow work that they do however the tickets were quite a bit more expensive down there and I was fine with where we were at.
They are really sticklers for not taking any photographs in the theater and I got aggressively yelled at for taking a photo of my friends in their seats which I thought was a little excessive. There really weren't any signs up that said you couldn't take photos in the theater and the woman usher pretty much screamed at me that she would take away my camera if I didn't delete the photo I had just taken with my camera. Meanwhile around the theater others were taking photos and not getting yelled at and needless to say - I'm usually a rule follower and I thought her customer service skills needed a bit more work.
The play was lovely. I was a bit concerned about the whole witch thing but really it was more a story about friendship and really made you think about evil and whether generally good people could just be considered evil because they've never been given any other choice by the world. There is a clever interplay between the wizard of oz movie and this story and I rather enjoyed the subtle love story (mostly because it centered around the character that wasn't beautiful and her being chosen to love...I story I rather identify with.)
All in all I was glad I've now seen the musical however I'm not sure I'd pay more than $50 to see it again. I probably will download a few of the songs off itunes.
Then we went to dinner at a restaurant called Winberry's in Oak Park. Kind of a bistro type place and we had dessert across the street at Oberweiss Dairy...yum.
Then the boys wanted to show me their Wii prowess so we watched them play a while and it was off to home.
Top 5: spending time with Kim and Nadine, Wicked, Carmel Corn, ice cream, beautiful chicago day
Here are some photos...
