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Look to the PBS-tern Sky for a Wicked Celebrity Concert

Casting a summoning spell for “celebrity artists from the worlds of film, pop, music, and television†that does not include Pentatonix. Photo: Joan Marcus

There are two constants about the musical Wicked: A movie adaptation will keep getting announced and (probably) never get made, and it will always find ways to make random pop stars screlt its songs on TV. Just a few years after staging a 15th-anniversary celebration in 2018, the musical is doing another event on August 29 on PBS in advance of its return to Broadway on September 14. Per Playbill, the special Wicked in Concert will be directed by Baayork Lee and “feature re-imagined musical arrangements created for the event, performed by celebrity artists from the worlds of film, pop, music, and television.†The event hasn’t announced any casting yet, but it seems like a prime place for agents to get people to audition for the Wicked movie (on the off chance that the adaptation actually does happen, which, historically, chances are not good) or even introduce the cast of it (if, on an even more off chance, the Wicked movie is actually filming this year). Can Olivia Rodrigo do “Defying Gravity� Can Rachel Zegler sing “Popular� Will Ariana Grande, pop’s reigning theater nerd, once again find a way to sing a Wicked song on TV? Will Ben Platt be involved? (Do you know who his father is?) This is like the Olympics but for people who are invested in gymnastics that are primarily vocal.

Look to the PBS-tern Sky for a ‘Wicked’ Celebrity Concert