TheRetroCritic

The Wizard Of Oz is great, and I LOVE Return To Oz . I even enjoy The Wiz , as strange as it is. So Wicked , as teen-friendly as it seemed, I was expecting to enjoy at least as a diagonal look into the darker side of that world. The result was pretty much what I expected with the odd surprise here and there. Some good, some not so good. The musical plays out like a Harry Potter / Legally Blonde crossover with green-skinned Elphaba taking her sister to Shiz University where she is soon ridiculed and cast-aside because of her peculiar looks. On the other end of the spectrum is the crazy-popular Glinda, a typical dumb blonde stereotype you've seen in every single US high-school teen comedy. The musical follows both characters as they clash, become the best of friends and come apart again when life in Oz gets a tad too complicated. You've got a basic love triangle going on in which some dude called Fiyero goes out with Glinda at first only to later fall in love with Elpha

For a Monty Python fan, the idea of a musical celebrating one of the iconic comedy group's finest achievements ( Monty Python And The Holy Grail ) was nothing short of spamgasmic. Nudge nudge...? In many ways, the marriage of Monty Python and musicals is a perfect one: the tackiness of some musicals crossed with The Pythons' bad taste humour promising a bit of a match made in heaven. That said, I'm not convinced that Holy Grail was the right musical to do. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Spamalot . As silly as it was, there was a lot of good stuff there and it really was complete,  glorious escapism: entertaining nonsense the whole way through. But even then I must admit that it is one hell of a hit-and-miss effort. The way I feel about it is that the best songs come from Eric Idle poking fun at Broadway musicals and most of the Holy Grail stuff falls flat either due to it being so familiar or it just not really working on stage. Sure hearing the Camelot song i

 Looks like every Broadway comedy musical these days is trying to be The Producers ... Mel Brooks' hugely successful show now being the basic template for shows based on movies (with the exception of the admittedly *ahem* unique Spiderman musical), after Dirty Rotten Scoundrels we're treated to Broadway's The Addams Family. An odd release but probably an inevitable one. Not based on any of the movies, the story actually follows up from past adaptations and sees a now grown-up Wednesday falling in love with a "normal" dude and having to face her unconventional family. It's essentially Addams Family Values with Wednesday taking on the Fester role. A good idea which should please both fans of the films and those looking to see something new. But what works for The Producers just doesn't work for everything. Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams? So much for the tall, suave, maniacal Gomez we all know and love! Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane but list