What Is This Feeling?

The production design of this number leans fully into theatrical comedy, with a tuba-anchored march that deliberately evokes old-fashioned operetta — a musical joke landing on two characters whose dislike feels proportionally overblown and therefore hilarious. The ensemble work is crisp and disciplined, the chorus lines crisp as snapping fingers, and the whole arrangement functions as a kind of musical argument where both Elphaba and Glinda interrupt and override each other, their melodic lines colliding with cheerful aggression. What elevates the number beyond pure comedy is the sincerity both performers bring to the antipathy — they are not winking at the audience but genuinely inhabiting the mutual horror of two incompatible personalities suddenly sharing a room. The lyric is a masterclass in specificity: "unadulterated loathing," "your voice," "your clothing" — the particulars of dislike rendered with the precision of someone who has catalogued every grievance. There is also something culturally resonant about the number as a satire of social performance, two young women performing elaborate disgust partly for each other and partly for a watching world. Best experienced with the full visual staging to appreciate the physical comedy layered beneath the vocal fireworks.