By Andrew Gans
31 Oct 2003

By 3:15 PM on Oct. 31, the day following the opening night of the new Stephen Schwartz musical Wicked, box office figures had reached $351,000.

Producer David Stone told Playbill On-Line that figure is nearly double the amount brought in the day prior to the show's official opening. The Oct. 30 box office total was $207,000. Stone expects the musical, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, to take in over half-a-million dollars by day's end.

Reviews for the musical ran the spectrum, with several positive notices — USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Journal News — and several mixed reviews, including a New York Times review that featured a love letter to Kristin Chenoweth, who portrays Glinda the Good Witch opposite Idina Menzel's Wicked Witch of the West.

With an advance sale of 9.6 million dollars and a healthy post-opening box office, producer Stone said, "We haven't even started our ad campaign, so we're feeling pretty good about the longtime life of the show."

When asked about the possibility of a touring production of the musical, which features a book by Winnie Holzman, Stone laughed and said, "Ask me next week."

Wicked plays the Gershwin Theatre, located in Manhattan at 222 West 51st Street. Tickets are available by calling (212) 307-4100 or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com.

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