Bewitched

THE BRIGHT LIGHTS OF MANHATTAN DAZZLE SHARMISTHA CHAUDHURI AS SHE CATCHES HER FIRST EVER BROADWAY SHOW

- SharmiStha Chaudhuri

Rye, vermouth and bitters combined beautifully. Outside, the bright lights of Broadway twinkled. It was a cold night and the pitter-patter of rain didn’t make it better. I was grateful to be sitting inside the warmth of a cosy bar in Manhattan. Jason Mraz’s face smiled back at me from across the street—the Grammy Award winner was making his Broadway debut in the hit show Waitress. It was close to 11pm on a Friday evening and the atmosphere inside was buzzing as it was the last working day of the bartender at the establishment. Swirling the excellent Manhattan and people-watching from the window, I tried to comprehend the various emotions running through me. I had just made my Broadway debut as a spectator and there couldn’t have been a better choice than Wicked.

It was Anastasia I had wanted to see. When the animated film came out in 1997, its songs had instantly become dear. Many an afternoon had been spent singing ‘Once upon a December’ and imagining myself dancing with the roguish Dimitri. But I was glad that it was Wicked and not Anastasia that I finally watched. Friendship, feminism and fantastic songs—it was an introductory lesson to Broadway that had me hooked.

As Jackie Burns sang her way into the hearts of the spectators, showing how circumstances led Elphaba or the Wicked Witch of the West to become who she was, my emotions played out like a pendulum—rage to sadness, happiness to sympathy. In retrospect, Kavita Kane’s novels, bringing to the forefront minor or neglected characters (all women, of course) of the epics and telling their side of the story, played on my mind. I was reminded of the various chapters I had read through the years as I sat through the two acts at the Gershwin Theatre.