Disclaimer: Okay, I leave to ski with a 60 percent chance that there will be no internet, so I update. This-will-probably-mean-lack-of-review-replies-too. By popular vote of those who bothered to favorite and respond to the PM/email notification I sent, it has been decided that since I've lost a lot of steam in the chapters about Musical numbers, I'll give you a few choice numbers based on what you told me you wanted. It also eliminates the fact I'd be spoiling it for a lot of people. Go see the show. Don't let me spoil it. Really. It's fantastic.
Bottom line, this is Defying Gravity. And before you call me slacker for rushing through the numbers, I tell you this. I have the final chapter completely written, along with seven pages worth of scenes from chapters after the dress rehearsal is done. This is keeping me from frequent updates. I have chapters written, but they'd be out of order with the plot. What's an authoress to do? Get a life. Fortunately, I have one, and it's you guys. Mwaa.
...Story time. -LostOzian
Maureen continued to stand onstage in a cloud of joyful hope as Joanne came onstage carrying several bags from earlier in 'Dear Old Shiz' and spouting random stuff about what to do to make Wizards like you. Maureen didn't really pay attention, and Mark and Mimi entered as Boq and Nessa, and they said a few random lines and they both got some really angsty lines worthy of Roger. Speak of the devil, Roger entered a few lines later, gave Maureen paper flowers that Mimi and Angel had had a ball making, and Joanne changed her name to Glinda. Roger ran away, and Maureen decided that Jo-linda should go to the Emerald City with her.
"Ooh, Emerald City!" Glinda started bouncing up and down in her seat, making Elphaba pinch her so she would shut up.
One Short Day was hard to pull off in the sense that they had to create the effect of a city, so what ended up happening was Joanne and Maureen stood in center while Mimi, Angel, Mark, and Collins circled around them, with Benny and Roger throwing new props onstage and catching old ones being thrown off. A hat, a book, the BubbleBrella, a stuffed Akita, and Maureen's paddleball were all included. Then the circle stopped, and Wizomania started, which was cool because it was Collins and, more importantly, Roger, dancing and turning cartwheels. It's not often Roger Davis turns cartwheels.
Mark informed Maureen and Joanne that the Wizard would see them now, and everyone spun around a few more times before a bed sheet was drawn aside to show a big paper mache head. Benny was hiding behind it with a vocorder, and had to say his big, scary line rather slowly so it could be understood. Maureen and Glinda were excellent at being fake-frightened, and Maureen shouted back at the head and Benny popped out. Benny tried to act older, but it was completely obvious that he and Maureen were too close in age for their own good. However, everyone ignored it. Angel got to carry the Grimmerie, aka Collin's old philosophy textbook, Mimi got to be a monkey and pretend some shawls hanging off her shoulders were wings, Maureen got to chant funny words, Joanne got to stand around onstage, and Benny got to pretend to be an asshole rather than actually be one. The other monkeys were Roger, Mark, and Collins, who danced around a little behind the head before exiting. Maureen got really hissy, picked up their 'Grimmerie' and ran offstage, followed by Joanne.
Benny hid behind the big head again, calling for his guards, who happened to be Mark and Roger. After shouting for them to find Maureen, they all went offstage and Mimi and Collins shoved various Props of Great Importance onstage while Maureen and Joanne entered again.
"Oh no… there's no more stairs!" Maureen was running around in a panic, with an equally distressed Joanne trailing after her. "This must be an attic!"
"Random much?" Boq said to Elphaba.
"You try speaking coherently when your childhood idol turns out to be fake," Elphaba said. Maureen picked up the decrepit broom and put it offstage, apparently blocking the door.
"Elphaba! Why couldn't you have stayed calm for once, instead of… flying off the handle!" Joanne played an excellent angry!Glinda, losing her cool while still having Maureen control the dominant half of the conversation when she started singing.
"So though I can't imagine how… I hope you're happy! Right! Now!" Maureen and Joanne turned away from each other to sulk angrily as Angel crossed to center stage.
"Citizens of Oz!" she called out. "There is an enemy among us who must be found and captured. Believe nothing she says… she's evil… responsible for the mutilation of these poor, innocent monkeys!"
Everyone poked Elphaba, who became very annoyed.
"Her green skin is an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature! This disgusting… This repulsive… This…" Angel set her face in an expression of grim determination. "Wicked Witch!" Stunned silence.
"Scary Morrible," Glinda whispered. The silence continued.
"Don't be afraid," Joanne told Maureen as she clutched the Diva's arm.
"I'm not…" Maureen said, growing stronger as she stood. "It's the Wizard who should be afraid. Of me." Joanne tugged on Maureen's sleeve.
"Elphie… Listen to me!" she begged. "Just… say you're sorry! Before it's too late! You can still be with the Wizard… what you've worked and waited for…" Maureen closed her eyes, trying to ignore Joanne. "You can have all you ever wanted…"
"I know," Maureen said. "But I don't want it- no," Maureen paused. "I can't want it an-y-more…" Everyone had a moment to ponder the selfless nobility of the line before Maureen started singing again.
"Something has changed within me," she sang slowly. "Something is not the same… I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game!" Joanne was again caught standing around onstage while action swirled around her. Really, the only thing she had to do was look worried and catch hold of Maureen and sing, "Can't I make you understand? You're having delusions of grandeur!"
"Elphie," Glinda leaned close to her friend. "She sounds exactly like you."
"No she doesn't," Elphaba said. "She doesn't match the accent."
"I think she does," Glinda nodded. "Sing with her for the next lines."
"For too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost…" Maureen belted to the rafters. And out the broken skylight. Pigeons landed to listen.
"Elphie! You didn't sing!"
"It's their show! And we do not sound alike!"
"Yes you do! I promise! Sing with her!"
Unfortunately for Glinda, there wasn't much singing next. Maureen pulled out Collins' textbook and put it on the floor, flipping through pages as Roger stamped on the floor and shouted, "Open the door! In the name of his Supreme Ozness!" Maureen started chanting, and Joanne started flipping out. Finally, after a lot of chanting and screeching, Joanne screamed, "STOP!" And Maureen stopped. And there was a long silence.
"Well?" Joanne asked once she caught her breath. "Where are your wings?" Maureen's face fell when she discovered that she was, in fact, wingless. "Maybe you're not as powerful as you think you are."
WHEN SUDDENLY Collins tossed the broom onstage as if it had flown, and Maureen caught it and started smiling.
"I told you, Glinda! Didn't I tell you?" Maureen said happily, standing up and striking a 'let's go flying' pose. "Quick! Get on!"
"What?!" Joanne jumped back. Maureen turned to her pleadingly.
"Elphie," Glinda asked. "Please, just sing along for the next three lines. That's all I'll need." Elphaba rolled her eyes.
"Unlimited…" Maureen sang and Elphaba kind of barely more than hummed. "Together we're unlimited, together we'll be the greatest team there's ever been…"
"You two have the same voice. I'm not kidding." Glinda said, reaching across to poke Fiyero. "Fiyero, the actress sounds exactly like Elphie."
"Oh, don't drag him into this," Elphaba muttered.
"Really?" Fiyero said. "Show me."
"No."
Joanne, in a fit of friendshipness, found the other Prop of Great Importance (a black bedsheet) and tied it around Maureen's neck, wishing she would be happy. Very high-emotion part of the Defying Gravity scene, and the three decided that it was too precious a moment to break with bickering about whether Elphaba and Maureen were twins.
Either way, Roger and Mark managed to 'break down the door', ruining the moment anyway. Maureen ran away, leaving Joanne to stand and fight grown men with swords with a teeny purse.
Now would be an excellent time to point out that Defying Gravity was an extremely uncomfortable experience for a certain Maureen Johnson. Joanne was given extra 'struggle' choreography, all the while Collins tried to tie a rope around her waist. Once that was done, Maureen started her line, "It's not her!" while Collins reached up her shirt to find her bra. He threaded the rope through so that the undergarment held the rope against Maureen's back. Part of the reason Collins was assigned the role of Rope Tier was that he was gay and there would be nothing sexual about reaching up her shirt, but clearly nobody spared a thought to how hard it is to deliver death-threat-esque lines when someone's tickling your back. Collins then fed the rope through the top of her shirt and threw it up so that it looped around one of the pipes in the ceiling. Collins would then poke Maureen who would switch the broom into her other hand, a cue that she was about to start flying, as Angel, Benny, Mimi, and Collins started to pull her into the air.
"It's meeeeeeeeeeee!" Maureen started singing, before being pulled slowly, and rather uncomfortably, into the air.
Glinda poked Elphaba again. "Sing!" she hissed.
"Fine, if you promise to not bug me about this again!"
"...Look to the western sky!" Maureen happily belted, with Elphaba doing a barely audible accompaniment. "As someone told me lately, everyone deserves the chance to fly, and if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free!" Elphaba folded her arms and stopped singing, having completely convinced her friends that she and Maureen were long lost twins, just in time to notice a certain Maureen Johnson begin to turn. Ever so slightly, the drama queen began to spin to her right. By the time she came to "Tell them how I am defying gravity", she turned a full ninety degrees to her right, or stage left. But there was nothing for her to do but just keep singing and look somewhat threatening until the rope turned around again.
"And nobody," Maureen shifted, trying to at least make herself spin faster. "In all of Oz, no Wizard that there is or was…" Nessa suddenly leaned across both Boq and Glinda, grabbing her sister's ear. Elphaba wondered why everyone was bugging her, and why now.
"She's a piñata!" Nessa said.
"Dear Oz," Elphaba mumbled, sitting up again.
"Meeeeeeeeeeee down!" Maureen sang, finally facing forward. She had been tied off, and now Angel, Benny, Mimi, and Collins joined Mark, Roger, and Joanne onstage, playing Frightened Ozians. Joanne hoped that Maureen was happy, and everyone else called her wicked, and swore to bring her down but didn't really say how, so nothing happened.
There was a big button, Maureen was facing dead center, and posed with her broom, everyone pointed, and everyone broke out into applause. Someone killed the lights so that there would be the Air of Mystery, but really all they did was they put Roger's mattress under Maureen (because all the soft and squishy props came from Roger's room) and then untied the rope, lowering her down.
Concessions at intermission consisted of two bottles of beer and a packet of M&Ms, but Elphaba didn't eat the green ones. Fiyero did. With great relish. And to Elphaba's delighted disgust.
Ask me to rant about The Drowsy Chaperone. If you have time. -LostOzian