Spoiler-free review:
Rating out of 10: 10
Likes: casting, acting, costuming and set choices, and the music, also I should give it another point I grew up on this show but I won’t cause that isn’t this kind of article.
Critiques: I wished they’d get more political, they could definitely get away with it, the novel by Gregory Maguire holds nothing back, but I understand why they don’t.
“And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no “after”, in the “ever after” of a Witch there is no “happily”; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.” – Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, 1995
Spoiler review – contains novel and musical spoilers:
Wicked: The Life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire is an American published fantasy novel for adults published to mixed reviews in 1995 it eventually became a musical albeit streamlined and significantly toned down through Universal and Stephen Shwartz with a musical script by Winnie Holzman and brilliant costume and makeup by Susan Hilferty. Perhaps it bears stating at the outset if the musical is an allegory and hopeful, the novel wicked is rife with political side-by-side comparisons to both America then and America now. The novel a grim dark fantasy is a tragedy and a political commentary, in the novel Elphaba is not only green and a witch and therefore outcast and a fighter but also intersex, bisexual-biromantic and polyamorous and is cursed with a pair of sharp teeth at birth, it is only the birth of her sister, Nessarose Thropp (the eventual wicked witch of the east) that tames little Elphaba. The musical, whilst brilliant is fundamentally aspiring for a different goal than the book there’s less philosophizing and less political strife but it carries a lot of the same core messages. The only character directly transposed from the book into the musical is Elphaba and even she is made more subtle. All in all, I like the musical WICKED as a musical as it was formative for me and is still a thing I love. I prefer the novel’s characterization, worldbuilding and moral thesis.
“The punishing political climate of Oz had beat her down, dried her up, tossed her away—like a seedling she had drifted, apparently too desiccated ever to take root. But surely the curse was on the land of Oz, not on her. Though Oz had given her a twisted life, hadn’t it also made her capable.” – Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the west by Gregory Maguire, 1995
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