In a case of history repeating itself,just as L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was adapted for the stage in a musical that became the toast of Broadway a couple years later, Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked, an imagined history of the land of Oz and its characters inspired by the original, was transformed into a hit Broadway musical a couple years later. Wicked tells the story of what happened in Oz from the time a strangely green-skinned girl is born, the friendship she forms with a beautiful and ambitious young woman she meets and school and the separate paths that lead them to their ultimate destinies. It begins a month long run at the The Paramount on Wednesday, September 2. Tickets have been on sale for a while but there are still seats to be found – The Paramount is offering a nightly lottery for $25 orchestra seats. Present yourself at the box office two and a half hours prior to show time to have your name placed in lottery drum; a half hour later names will be drawn for the opportunity to buy up to two orchestra seats for $25 each, cash only.

Photo by Joan Marcus

I recently spoke with Donna Vivino, starring in the role of Elphaba, the character who becomes by story’s end the famous Wicked Witch of the West about the show. Vivino, who has been a working stage actor since she was just eight years old, says she wanted to play the role of Elphaba as soon as she saw the show for the first time herself, back when it first opened on Broadway and she found herself taken with the role. This November will mark her second anniversary of playing Elphaba so it’s obvious that she’s been enjoying it.

One of the reasons she enjoys working on Wicked so much is that it has a devoted and enthusiastic fan following–”People love the show; it’s got a great following,” she says–but you needn’t already be a fan of the show to enjoy it and you definitely don’t need to have read the novel. Vivino hadn’t read the novel herself the first time she saw Wicked on stage and thinks that it might even be advantageous to see it without already knowing the story so you can go in with fresh expectations. “A lot of people don’t know anything about the show” when they go see it, she says, and still leave happy.