“Wicked” has always been insanely popular. But like Glinda, whom all the cool kids want to hang out with but don’t necessarily respect, the musical has been more of a fan favorite than a critics’ darling.
John M. Chu’s blockbuster film has brought “Wicked”-mania to a new stratosphere. For a while, it seemed as if the stars of the movie, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, had conquered not only the movie musical box office jinx but also all of social media.
The “Wicked” frenzy shows no signs of letting up. At the Hollywood Pantages last Thursday, where the musical returned for its sixth run in L.A., there was a good deal of cosplaying among attendees. I’m not talking about tweens, who have long been a core repeat audience, but adults decked in frilly pink or ominous green, depending on whether they were Team Glinda or Team Elphaba.
There’s no comparing the quality of the performances at the Pantages with the awesome star power of the movie. Erivo, a musical theater divinity, incarnated Elphaba from the inside out while delivering the power ballads with as much feeling as vocal majesty.
The stage musical’s one advantage over the film is that it covers the whole story as set out in the book Winnie Holzman adapted from Gregory Maguire’s novel, which is itself a prequel to L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” conceived as an Orwellian parable. The film brings us to the end of the musical’s first act. A second film, coming out next year, will complete the tale.
The two-hour, 40-minute running time of Part 1 threw into relief the musical’s weaknesses. I wanted the score by Stephen Schwartz to be worthy of Erivo’s magnificence. No one could do more with “I’m Not That Girl” or “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba’s seismic Act I numbers, but I was more moved by Erivo’s virtuosity than by Schwartz’s songwriting skill.
Grande matched her co-star’s vocal prowess, but her numbers tend to reflect her character’s superficiality. “Popular,” which she sings before she shortens her name from Galinda to Glinda, is a delight that Grande savors like a big, delicious wad of pink bubblegum.
Glinda’s shtick had me laughing reflexively but emptily. I was never genuinely tickled. The visual splendor of the spoiled brat’s college trousseau certainly casts a cinematic spell. Imagine if Elle Woods from “Legally Blonde” had gained admission to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry instead of Harvard Law School and you’ll have a good approximation of the spectacular treatment. Grande makes the relationship that forms between Glinda and Elphaba genuine, but her character is more one-note than Erivo’s. She leans into the joke, but the fun is ephemeral.
Re-encountering the stage musical after seeing the film made me appreciate even more the brilliance of Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the role of Glinda on Broadway with her signature magic, a combination of glittering vivacity, operatic singing and Judy Holliday-esque clowning. Chenoweth made the original screen Glinda of “The Wizard of Oz” seem like a bland afterthought.
I was at the Tony Awards the year that “ “Avenue Q” grabbed the night’s best musical prize out from under “Wicked’s” expected victory march. The race, which pitted a brazenly off-color indie-spirited musical with puppets against a commercial juggernaut from Oz, culminated in a collective gasp when the envelope was read. But though there was audible shock, the outcome was hardly a complete surprise.
The reviews for “Wicked,” while glowing for the lead performers, were decidedly mixed. Box office glory didn’t override the reservation enough Tony voters clearly had about its overwrought anthems, ungainly storytelling and heavy-handed politics.
Idina Menzel won the Tony Award that year for her performance as Elphaba, pulling off a dramatic upset against Chenoweth. I don’t often attend the Tony Awards, but I remember being more startled by this win than “Avenue Q’s.”
Menzel had the more complex role and so on one level it made perfect sense. But Chenoweth was Broadway royalty. And while Menzel was hardly a newcomer (she had received a Tony nomination for her performance in “Rent”), she was up against one of the Great White Way’s brightest lights.
I don’t think I fully appreciated how much Chenoweth added to the role until I saw others try to step into her character’s floating bubble. Megan Hilty made a delightful impression, starring opposite Eden Espinosa’s affecting Elphaba, when I reviewed “Wicked” at the Pantages in 2007. But Chenoweth patented this fizzy, morally complicated update of Glinda the Good — one of the reasons it was karmically so satisfying to see Menzel and Chenoweth reunited in the film for a command performance in Oz.
The cast in the current touring iteration gives off a somewhat tertiary impression. My companion thought Susan Hilferty’s costumes were the most praiseworthy feature of the production. He had a point.
Austen Danielle Bohmer’s Glinda and Lauren Samuels’ Elphaba are impressive singers. And both neatly fulfill the outlines of their characters. But the sense of a retread is hard to shake.
There’s a tentativeness to Bohmer’s comic outlandishness. (Grande revels more naturally in the amusing shallowness.) Glinda’s hair flips and knee-jerk narcissism lack the necessary conviction.
Samuels has no trouble summoning the strength for Elphaba’s power ballads. She also finds the beauty in her less vociferous numbers. But the emotional arc of the character is less forcefully conveyed outside of the music.
Samuels’ Elphaba starts on an angrier note than Erivo adopts in the film. She arrives at Shiz University as the caretaker of her sister, Nessarose (Erica Ito), who uses a wheelchair. Immediately ostracized by the students for her green pigmentation, Elphaba explodes with fury when her sister is abruptly removed from her care. But the stage musical doesn’t have much time to develop the inner life of the character. Samuels’ explosion seems more tied to the plot than to the role’s psychology.
The movie’s biggest improvement is in the way it deepens Elphaba’s alienation. Casting a Black actor who happens to also be queer adds a whole other dimension to the character’s lived experience of prejudice. As Erivo demonstrated in her blazing Tony-winning performance as Celia in the Broadway revival of the musical “The Color Purple,” she has access to such profound depths of her soul when performing that singing and acting become one.
I found Jonathan Bailey’s performance as Fiyero, Glinda’s golden boy love interest who falls unexpectedly for Elphaba, to be self-conscious. But the gravity of Erivo’s integrity as Elphaba is irresistible. How could Fiyero not succumb to her inner radiance?
The romance between Xavier McKinnon’s Fiyero and Samuels’ Elphaba, by contrast, requires a certain suspension of disbelief. One accedes to the story as one succumbs to a fairy tale. Truth has little to do with it.
Neither the stage production nor the musical can do much with the melodramatic Madame Morrible, the headmistress at Shiz who becomes a key player in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s fascist machinations. But at least the film gets some glorious eccentric villainy from Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard.
The special effects at the Pantages lack cinematic sweep. I could have done with a little less fog in the opening number, but watching performers hoisted into the air is always a thrill, even when the ropes are evident.
“Wicked,” on the stage or on the screen, is ultimately more of a phenomenon than a great musical. I’ve never once listened to the cast recording and still have no desire to do so. The songs are as much a product of the show as the costumes — not anything I’d like to try on at home. Maguire’s novel, which I read when the musical first came out, is touted by friends I hold in high regard. But the musical’s politics are as unsubtle as any other aspect of this lumbering show.
The success of “Wicked” is hardly a mystery, but its appeal isn’t purely artistic. The creators deserve praise for the potency of their brew, but commercial forces have helped this musical defy gravity.
