Green is Good
By the end, we feel like we have been witness to the characters' growth.
No one mourns the wicked. And indeed, after watching Wicked, I had nothing to mourn except my unkind teenage budget, which was unable to buy me the merchandise I wanted.
To be honest, though, Wicked spots a plot that is less than extraordinary. It follows the stories of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the East, who meet studying magic in university. They fall in love with the same guy and have their beliefs challenged. This is, of course, an oversimplification on my part, but what I am trying to say is that while Wicked's plot is hardly the most intriguing or complex one out there, it is certainly classic, and very likeable at that. We have the angsty and misunderstood girl who gets spurred into ambition. We have the vain, comical bimbo with a heart of gold. We have the love triangle. And everyone ends up BFFs... Rote as it may all seem, though, it is in the skilful arrangement of the many characters and various plot threads that the book shines: it never feels overcrowded, and by the end, we feel like we have been witness to the characters' growth.
But plot aside, what gives Wicked a boost over other musicals is its magical music and lyrics. I can toss out a list of adjectives to describe Wicked's music: grand, entertaining, poignant and fun… all the while staying true to the spirit of Broadway. My only prior encounter with the show was purely with its soundtrack, thus the songs were open for my imagination to interpret. One Short Day turned out exactly the way I had imagined it to be – it was perhaps the most celebrative, light-hearted and engaging song of the night. With a chorus backing them, Elphaba (Jemma Rix) and Glinda (Suzie Mathers) invited me to join them in exploring the hustle and bustle of the Emerald City.
Glinda is a memorable caricature: energetic, bimbotic and naïve. Suzie Mathers certainly held her ground in the role, with jettes and semi-cartwheels bringing terrific energy to Popular, and indeed displaying the stamina and show(o)manship of a true performer throughout the evening.
Defying Gravity is perhaps Wicked's most well-known, but my faith in Jemma Rix wavered as she started the song shakily. She faced some problems with channelling strength into her high notes and overused her head voice in the first few lines. Fortunately, she only got better and slowly built to a climax on a stunning, belted top note. In the front of the stalls, where I was sitting, everyone was looking up to enjoy the magnificent sight of Elphaba soaring in the air with a chorus below her. And when the song ended, the only thing onstage bigger than Elphaba's humungous skirt was her powerhouse vocals.
For Good is, in my opinion, the best showcase of Stephen Schwartz's craft, with its poignant lyrics and appealing melodies. The well-blended voices of Rix and Mathers did justice to the metaphors in the lyrics. However, the staging of it was neither as moving nor as dramatic as I had hoped it would be; more could have been done with the sets and the lights to aid the atmosphere.
Speaking of sets, the stage and its multiple locations were framed by stairwells on either side of the stage, allowing for a variety of levels and bustling action that brought the stage to life. Atop this, the giant puppet dragon that hung above the stage and stared down at the audience added to the theatre's ambiance – even before the show started, we knew the stage was set and we were ready to go on an adventure.
The elaborate costumes stood out too, with each character maintaining a distinctive style despite their evolutions as people. So when Glinda exchanges her cute, pink dress Act One dress for the grand fairy godmother dress of the final scene, we understand her transformation. Meanwhile, though Elphaba was rarely out of black, her outfit still transformed from nerdy schoolgirl simplicity to a textured ensemble complete with pointy hat. Even Nessarose exchanged her schoolgirl outfit for a Queen Bee one, and likewise her wheelchair turned into a throne on wheels. It comes as no surprise that a team of more than 10 was hired maintain of the costumes, wigs and accessories – especially when you find out that Glinda's bubble dress weighs 20kg.
I don't know how else to sum up my Wicked experience other than by saying it was magical. I can't have been the only one to think so, judging by the mad rush for merchandise after the show. Yet the strongest showing of affirmation was the mostly standing ovation in the curtain call. The last glimpse I caught before the curtain fell was Suzie Mathers squatting down and frantically waving goodbye. It then dawned on me that Wicked's cast loved what they were doing and had a hell of a show themselves. And that's where the magic comes from.
This much-feted reframing of The Wizard of Oz moves at a terrific pace thanks to Winnie Holzman's remarkably clever and efficient book. Granted, some of Stephen Schwartz's songs slow the action a little, particularly in the second act, where numbers such as As Long as You're Mine are also tonally questionable... but largely Schwartz's music is upbeat and poppy enough to sustain the show's propulsion (and there are some very clever offset rhymes for those with sharp ears).
The leads, Jemma Rix as Elphaba and Suzie Mathers as Glinda do very well. This is a necessarily broad form of theatre, but they retain just enough subtlety and depth to make the emotions land. Indeed, acting-wise, I preferred them to the stars of the Broadway production I saw a year ago. Singing-wise, they are perhaps not quite as strong: Rix occasionally spikes into a screechy tone at the top of her belt range, and Mathers begins the evening poorly, with unintelligible, throaty consonants marring the pseudo-operatic No One Mourns the Wicked. But for the most part, both are excellent, with Mathers' Popular expressing a delightful joie de vivre and crisp, rounded tones despite its pace, and with Rix's moving and expressive I'm Not That Girl providing the highlight of the show.
Of course, the highlight of the show is supposed to be Defying Gravity, but for the second time now, I haven't found it to be. The song is a powerful, aptly uplifting anthem to self-empowerment - yet the dramatic context requires it to be sung with an anger that fights against its soaring melody and, ironically, pulls it down. It's still good, as well as being excitingly staged and terrifically lit, but I can't help feeling that it's the right song at not quite the right time.
The rest of the show is pretty much identical to the Broadway production, which means lavish, off-kilter costumes; fluid, well-judged sets (except for the pointless dragon-puppet centrepiece); energetic dances; and a rousing pit band. But there's one exception: Bert Newton gives a painfully wooden performance as the Wizard and, at least on the night I attended, failed to latch on to the pitch of his first number, A Sentimental Man. I kept wishing Lim Kay Siu would run on and replace him.
Wicked will never be my favourite musical due to its saggy, thematically over-reaching second act, its highly convenient characters, and its politics, which are only slightly less sophisticated than those found in Saturday-morning cartoons. But if you want the full Broadway experience, I have to admit that this is it. And if you have young teen daughters, there's probably some kind of law that you have to take them.
Matthew Lyon, 13 Dec 2011 (3.5 out of 5)