Christian Thompson as Fiyero in the National Tour of WICKED | Photo by Joan Marcus
Wicked the Musical
Castmember Christian Thompson March 29 - April 9, 2023 Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
www.Kravis.org
We’re not in Kansas anymore: Actor Christian Thompson reflects on the impact of Wicked as it lands in South Florida For actor Christian Thompson, a Fort Lauderdale native, there’s really no place like home. And, without so much as the click of a heel, the actor returns to South Florida to take the stage at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts for Wicked’s March 29-April 9, 2023, run. Thompson, who has a smile that could melt even the wickedest of witches, joins the cast as Fiyero, Elphaba’s love interest. Calling it a dream role, Thompson did not think he’d get the chance to play the character since only a handful of Black actors have been cast in the role. “My family has always been a really big Wizard of Oz family. We were the family that packed into the family room and tried to match up the Pink Floyd album to the movie, and that was before it was digital and easy to do so,” he said. “And, I just decided at eight or nine years old that I wanted to be an actor and I was very serious about it.”
When his mother heard they were making a musical about her favorite character, the Wicked Witch of the West, she bought two copies of the book it was based on, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Although his mother only got about halfway through the book, Thompson devoured it. Wicked, the Tony-award winning show debuted on Broadway in 2003. Towards the end of the show’s first year, Thompson was in NYC with a hip-hop dance company. His mother entered the pair in the lottery for the Saturday matinée performance before their flight home, but they didn’t win. “We had just enough time to enter for the evening show and my mom was like, ‘I’ll make you a deal, if we win, I’ll push back our flights and, if we don’t win, we’ll run to the airport’,” he said. “We won that evening and we saw a show for the first time in New York.”
