Disclaimer: Long chapter with long descriptions. Bear with me, please. I don't own RENT, I don't own Wicked, and I don't own makeshift performance spaces. Story time! -LostOzian
The music was all pre-recorded, consisting of Roger's acoustic, the electric from the Life Café, a piano Joanne had learned to play in a previous life, one of Angel's girlfriends who could play a mean violin, and anything cool that sounded in the moment. Thanks to a bit of recording magic from Mark (and three tango-KOs), it sounded like a full orchestra, even if not all the instruments were usually found in an orchestra.
The lights in the loft went out, the two and only stage lights turning on, bathing the stage area in a yellowy light. Seeing as they needed as many people on stage as possible for No One Mourns the Wicked, instead of Monkeys, Maureen was the first one on stage. She was dressed in a black long-sleeve shirt and black pants, with her witch hat and a sheet tied around her neck. Excessive green eye shadow made a raccoon mask around her face, 'representing' the green skin more than greenifying her.
She did a cool little solo-dance for a little while, but started backing up. As she got further upstage, pairs started entering, one from stage left matching a twin on stage right; Roger, Angel, Collins, Mark, Benny, and Mimi. When Maureen reached the end of the stage, the music changed and she turned around, becoming practically invisible against the backstage area. Everyone else did a three-sixty jump, facing the audience at the end.
"Good news!" they all sang. "She's dead! The Witch of the West is dead!"
"That was cool," Boq said. "When Elphaba turned around, it meant she melted. I never thought to do it that way,"
"Shh!" Glinda said. "I come on soon!" Boq kicked himself for almost ruining Glinda's character entrance.
"Good news! Good news!" Everyone sang.
"Look! It's Glinda!" Angel kind of said-screamed, the way the line's done on the soundtrack. Sure enough, Joanne 'floated' in, the skeleton umbrella raised high and covering her in a mini dome of plastic wrap, simulating a bubble.
"It's good to see me, isn't it?" Joanne asked, kind of smirking at everyone. The Bohos were saying discordant agreements when Joanne held up her lawyer-hand, silencing them. "No need to respond. That was rhetorical." Joanne sounded a lot more like some sort of schoolteacher.
"Ooh," Glinda whispered. "Scary me."
"No kidding," Boq added, hoping he had permission to speak.
Joanne belted the aria, hitting all the notes, but it was a lot less fluffy than Glinda herself would have sang it, but since she was consistent in her portrayal of Glinda, it worked.
"For you and-" Joanne was singing.
"No one mourns the wicked!" Benny got the first mini-company solo.
"No one cries, 'they won't return!'" Roger got the next line, seeing as there were only three girls on stage, and one of them was supposed to be a witch.
"No one lays a lily on their grave!" Everyone sang. Mark the goody-two-shoes was next.
"The good man scorns the wicked!" Angel and Mimi flanked him to either side.
"Through their lives, our children learn…"
"What we miss, when we misbehave!" Everyone sang with the cool little crescendo at the end.
"Nicely done," Nessa commented.
Joanne got another belted aria, then folded up the umbrella, which apparently meant she wasn't floating in a bubble anymore and everyone was allowed to interact with her. At the end of the line about 'nothing grows for the wicked', Collins, Angel, and Mark surrounded Joanne in the downstage right corner as Benny, Mimi, and Roger bolted off stage at record breaking speeds.
"Glinda, why does wickedness happen?" Angel asked innocently. The Ozians all said 'awww' internally.
"That's a very good question," Joanne said. "Which leads me to ask this; are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?" Glinda punched Elphaba's arm lightly.
"Plot point!" she said, beaming at the green Witch.
"Congratulations, Glinda, you paid attention in English." Elphaba said as Roger entered again, fingering a beanie hat with propeller and everything.
"I'm off to the assembly, my dear," he said as Mimi came on stage with her hair in a funny looking hairnet.
"Hey! Father has a full head of hair!" Nessa noticed and said to herself excitedly. Roger started singing.
"How I hate to go and leave you lonely…" It became apparent that in that one line that Roger was far, far too cool for Frex and had been poorly cast, but what could they do with only eight people?
"That's all right, it's only just one night…" Mimi took Roger's beanie and put it on his head. Boq hid his face to keep from laughing; the late Esteemed Governor was wearing a beanie.
"But know that you're here in my heart, while I'm out of your sight!" Roger and Mimi kissed, having won the argument that Frex and Melena must have truly loved each other on some level if they had Nessa later in the show, and then he exited. The music changed, and Benny entered, wearing the Wizard jacket and constantly upstaging himself for the purpose of foreshadowing. Joanne said her line about secrets, and Benny and Mimi started the cool bottle-dance thing. Roger did his best to not to scream backstage as Angel discretely exited.
"Melena dances like a stripper," Fiyero commented.
"I think the actress is a stripper," Elphaba responded.
Benny finally let Mimi have the bottle, which she took a 'drink' from, then took it back and ran off. Mimi stood center stage and mimed the development of pregnancy as Joanne said, "And from the moment she was born, she was… well… different!"
Mimi screamed. Very loudly. The Ozians cringed. Roger and Angel managed to get the Magical Metal Table of Saving Lives onstage, which Mimi fell on, using her experience with withdrawal to act like she was giving birth.
"It's coming!" Angel cried, playing the midwife.
"Now?!" Roger said, sounding very freaked out.
"No, in a week…" Elphaba muttered, smiling, but stopped because she remembered this was the scene where she's born and brutally rejected by the male role model of the house.
"I see a nose…" Angel sang, preparing one of Mark's towels like a good midwife would.
"I see a curl…" Roger added.
"It's a healthy, perfect, lovely little-" Angel screamed. Roger shouted, "Sweet Oz!"
"What is it? What's wrong?" Mimi's line was delivered clearly.
"Wait a clock-tick, if she was in labor, how can she speak so clearly?" Glinda wondered, talking over Angel and Roger. Angel started busying herself with Mark's towel, wrapping up something.
"Like a froggy, ferny cabbage, the baby is unnaturally…" Angel then lifted the towel, showing a baby doll face done up exactly the way Maureen's face was, like a green raccoon mask.
"That's clever, too," Nessa said. "They didn't have to green the whole baby." Elphaba took Fiyero's hand as Roger said his 'take it away' line, and Mimi magically found the strength to help Angel carry the MMToSL offstage
"So you see, it couldn't have been easy!" Joanne unfolded her umbrella again, beginning to fly above everyone else as they continued with the song. Things were going very well, and the Bohos reached the end.
"No one mourns the wicked!"
"Good news!" Joanne sang.
"No one mourns…. the WICKED!"
Two types of guitar, piano, drums, violin, and trash can lids all crashed at the same time.
"WICKED!"
More crashing.
"We get it, we get it, I'm wicked…" Elphaba mumbled. Fiyero smiled.
"WICKED!!!"
And thus the opening number went without incident to the applause of the audience.