My second viewing came last summer, when 6-year-old Catie and I saw the show on a “date” while Gwen and Jacob were away. She's rarely been more excited in her life, and she spent the show with her mouth wide open in wonder. When I asked her afterward whether she was a popular Glinda or a daring Elphaba, she said, “I kinda think I want to be both!” It was a good answer.

As for that school production–our school district's music supervisor launched student productions of Wicked (actually, only the non-dramatic parts of the first act plus a couple songs from the second, including “For Good”) in every elementary school…but not under the name “Wicked.” Instead–worried about the conservative Christians who might get offended by a play with that title–the productions were titled “The Untold Story of Oz.”

Having already gone ballistic on several occasions over the Christians' attempts to change our school's mascot — a wizard — I completely blew a nut over the “Wicked” business. I scheduled a meeting with the school's (very conservative) principal, who insisted she had no control over what had been done to the play. I wrote a letter to the district questioning whether they had secured a legal right to present a truncated show under a different name, which was never answered. It required a lot of restraint, particularly considering my anti-censorship obsessiveness, to resist picking up the phone and calling the ACLU on my kids' school.

It's unfortunate that such concerns should in any way sully a terrific show like Wicked, whose message is one every kid (and some of their parents, especially around where I live) should take to heart.