Wicked
How does a stage show work when you’ve already seen the Hollywood version?
An Opinion piece by Lewis Eyre
Wicked
How does a stage show work when you’ve already seen the Hollywood version?
An Opinion piece by Lewis Eyre
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How does a stage show work when you’ve already seen the Hollywood version?
An Opinion piece by Lewis Eyre
The book was banned. In the school where my Mum works, when the film blew up, the headteacher sent out an email saying that no copies of the Gregory Maguire book would be stocked in the library. The reason is, while the musical and film it was based on took a family-friendly approach, this 1995 novel was adult-orientated fan-fiction. Seeing the musical had always been at the top of my West Endagenda after seeing Jon M. Chu’s block-busting adaptation, so this month I visited Victoria’s Apollo Theatre, decked out all in pink and green (the theatre, not me). Having sworn off musicals for most of my childhood, I went to see Hamilton in its Plymouth leg last year, and it might just be the only fantastic musical out there. So, Wicked had big ruby slippers to fill. “I prefer the movie!” a child decries at the interval, after the goosebump-y Defying Gravity set piece gets everybody up from their seats and clapping until their palms ache. That’s the big issue with going to Wicked now, is that Grande and Erivo are now the definitive Glinda and Elphaba. Their voices are astonishing, and their interpretations of the character sublime. Who knew Ariana Grande could be so funny? Jeff Goldblum was basically born to be the Wizard (or rather, the Wizard feels like he’s created to be Jeff Goldblum), and Jonathan Bailey appeals to the mums more than any other man can. He’s this generation’s Daniel O’Donnell. Yes, this version of Madame Morrible can actually sing, but can she charm us like Michelle Yeoh? Madame Morrible, Wicked Witch!
The big difference is the timings. Each of the two Wicked films is two hours and forty minutes long, which is about the runtime of the entire musical. The first half in particular runs along noticeably quicker, dashing along key plot points without dwelling on the humorous anecdotes in the way the 2024 film managed. The second half, both in film and musical, is an absolute mess, as it tries to round off all the story and character arcs while trying to tie into the original Wizard of Oz story. It fails in that way, the songs are less catchy and feelgood and all the characters are just so miserable throughout because it becomes a bleak fascist state. I feel weird writing about one of the biggest musicals ever for an Indie mag, but the one thing the stage production does have compared to the movies is the smaller scale. Whereas Chu had an eye-watering budget to mess around with, the stage production has to be truly creative with its set pieces, and your jaw will be open. Sure, if you want something genuinely low-key, go to an off-West-End show, but if you want something that does so much with so little, then that’s the key to Wicked’s success. “What is this feeling?”, which highlights the contrast between Glinda (at that point, Ga-linda, later with a silent ‘Ga’) and Elphaba, and “Dancing through life”, which introduces all the major couples of the story, are nothing short of showstopping. If you have any respect for stagecraft, just soaking up the reactions of all the families who go to see this show, every matinee and every evening, is something you can never quite capture in the cinema, when everybody is on their phones checking Snapchat notifications. It’s a vibe, with a very annoying ending that is only slightly worse than the “It was all a dream” of the original. Speaking of which, how does that work, when all the characters and animals are very clearly real here, and not figments of Dorothy’s seemingly immensely powerful imagination? That’s a mystery we’ll never solve.
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