Talk about obsessions! Author Gregory Maguire was so enthralled by the 1939 film version of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” that he devoted an entire novel to the back-story, constructing elaborate explanations for talking lions, flying monkeys, ruby slippers and, particularly, the various witches.
That book, “Wicked,” is harmless fun, if a bit pedantic. Like most alternate-world fantasy fiction, it bogs down in explanations, ultimately raising as many questions as it answers.
The musical comedy that has been drawn from “Wicked” by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman is every bit as unruly as the novel but far, far more efficient.
Holzman’s script rips through Maguire’s wistful musings like a Panzer division through Belgium, destroying all obstacles and taking no prisoners. Instead of the moody, regime-change politics of the book, we get Dick Cheney in a funny suit, manipulating a polyglot population as gullible as it is singy and dancey.
Pretty much everybody and everything becomes, metaphorically, black or white. Or green, of course, since much is made of the “otherness” caused by the skin color of Elphaba, the Witch Formerly Known as the Wicked Witch of the West.
Now I’m no kind of expert on things Oz. As I remember the film, that green makeup looked like somebody’s arbitrary choice for the actress Margaret Hamilton. In Maguire’s book (and Holzman’s libretto), however, skin color and animal oppression stagger under the weight of psycho-social meaning and become, as racial discrimination and genocide, major drivers of the plot.
The core of this show is a titanic effort to fit some higher meaning into a casual fable without disturbing any of the iconic elements, like the striped stockings on the dead Wicked Witch of the East or that damned pointy hat that poor Elphaba gets stuck with.
Because she’s the heroine, see, in case you’re not familiar with this latter day take on the basic Oz story. Here, Elphaba is the sensitive one who sympathizes with the animals and resists wizardly mind-control. Her inevitable spiral downward toward her watery fate at the hands of an unseen Dorothy is done with far more style in the novel but more elbow-digging realism on stage.
The play becomes a duo for Elphaba and Glenda, the nice witch played by the creamy-white Billie Burke. In the novel, they meet as school chums, along with a brace of other fetching youngsters. The musical hasn’t time for such decoration, sadly, because room must be found for several Stephen Schwartz songs, which don’t register at first hearing as more than stating the obvious: “Dancing Through Life,” “Wonderful,” “No One Mourns the Wicked” and so forth.
The Wizard, played with buoyant charm and scant menace by P. J. Benjamin, gets a soft shoe. The back-up villain, done as an icy bully by Alma Cuervo, gets a duet. But the big solos go to the witches.
Kendra Kassebaum is impossible to resist as the perfect creampuff Glinda, who enters asking, with conviction, “Aren’t we glad I’m here?” Kassebaum’s body language is a hoot and her vocal range astonishes but it’s her endless chirpy self-love and the way it fits all needs that make the character live. Her song is “Popular.”
Elphaba should be the better role – she gets to do the magic and she snags the handsome prince, although here’s no time in the musical for the steamy consummation of the book. Julia Murney sings up a storm – “I’m Not That Girl” is her anthem and she pretty much snatches her ultimate duo with Glinda, “For Good” – but there’s just not as much there to watch as there is with Kassebaum.
The show’s decor – sets by Eugene Lee, witty costumes by Susan Hilferty (who turns the ruby slippers silver) and speckled lighting by Kenneth Posner – show an unusual degree of collaboration, especially in a second act forest scene, which is quite enchanting.
Dominick Amendum conducts a nice blend of 14 musicians with a clear beat that obviously helps a show heavy with pushy choral effects. Wayne Cilento devised the routine dance routines and the cop who directs all the traffic with smooth artifice is Joe Mantello.
I was sad not to see L. Frank Baum’s name anywhere on the show program (The novel ignores him also) because, without those original stories, there wouldn’t be zip left of this project. As it is, the thing is a patchwork of elements from book, early stage versions, movie, a movie about the movie, lots of camp revues and the Maguire book, all mooshed together into something resembling jaunty folklore.
There’s nothing wrong with borrowing familiar myths but, when the source is known, credit is due.
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