“Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven’t wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted, of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.” – Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)
Spoiler-free review:
Rating out of 10: 9 and ½
Likes: Perhaps controversial to my peers, but as an improvement on the source material, that being the 2003 Stephen Schwartz musical with a script written by Winnie Holzman, I found it an improvement in nearly every single way. I very much appreciate its not remotely subtle parallels to the Holocaust of the 1920s and 1940s carried by the Nazis of the Third Reich, primarily, though in no way exclusively against the Jewish people; for the imagined crime in their Christian Nationalist minds of existing as a Jewish person in the world. The way it is not afraid to dwell in the grey shade of dark and existential dread, the Maguire novel is from the first page. I also appreciate its winks and nods to the gulf war and American imperialism which inspired Gregory Maguire to turn the Wicked Witch of the West, his regular nightmare into the narratively though never even in the novel ‘morally’ justified bisexual/biromantic, intersex; coded on account of being 1990, always Jewish coded, per ‘wicked’ and ‘witch’ Byronic anti-heroine Elphaba Thropp from Munckinland and raised partially in Quadling Country. Jeff Goldblum being Jeff Goldblum somehow maintains his charisma and air of wit even when winking and nodding to Charlie Chaplin’s 1940s dark political satire, The Great Dictator. I find a measure of comfort in that Chaplin would, all things considered, whilst Hitler and those like him would turn about in distress in some imagined afterlife, as we should always ensure they do. Cynthia Erivo gives an excellent performance, and as I have worked in theatre, I must commend Ariana Grande; regardless of whatever anyone else says of her for putting in the character and analytical work for Glinda Upland, the allegedly ‘good’ as written by Schwartz. Marisa Bode makes me appreciate the character of Nessarose Thropp’s presence more than I already do, somehow. I enjoy the sympathetic yet somehow still cold, calculated air Michelle Yeoh plays Morrible with, as that is true to the book. Understandable on account of the social structure, her gender, far less so in every other way. Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, and everyone else are clearly having an excellent time in their roles, just as being in a school play, a musical, an opera, or otherwise ought to be.
Critiques: Of course, I have already made my preference on this subject abundantly clear, but I still maintain Fiyero ought to be played by someone who is non-European (white), ideally a brown or black man whenever possible and though I understand it is an adaptation of the 2003 musical and not the book the ending, though more open-ended than the stage show is the ending is still too tidy for my taste.
“Where I’m from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren’t true… we call it history.” – Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)
Spoiler review:
I will be concise, for those unfamiliar with the structure of opera, most Western plays and musical theatre, though ideally it is still new enough to remember. Wicked (2026): For Good is the second act of Wicked (2025) and being an act two, it is the fallout of the characters’ decisions in the first act, or acts and the part of the play in which the characters suffer the most inner turmoil as well the part of the opera in which the ‘mad woman song’ (i.e. Anna Bolena, La Traviata, and The Magic Flute) takes place in, with musicals you have an act one ‘twelve o clock number’ to close act one, with the musical Wicked, Defying Gravity, Elphaba’s ‘i will’ to her ‘I want’ song, The Wizard and I and in paraphrasing Stephen Shwartz about No Good Deed, as written for Idina Menzel, her operatic, orchestral litany of ‘well, I am now, seeing as you have decided unwisely to make me this.’ Elphaba Thropp, having to face the consequences of being made a public enemy, holds out as long as she can, until she can no longer. Glinda Upland, in her trauma, internalized repression and personal egotism, is a pawn, at least partially willingly, of Morrible and the so-called ‘Wonderful’ Wizard. Nessarose and the Munchkin Boq continue their downward spiral into mutually ruinous codependency; Morrible assists the authoritarian Wizard; and Fiyero measures his options, eventually putting together the equation he should have put together some time ago: Elphaba needs his help, even if she herself dislikes admitting she needs any kind of help whatsoever. Eventually, in the consequences of inventing a pun only somewhat intended, a scapegoat leads to the ‘witch hunting’ mob coming after the green girl Elphaba, not before she witnesses the extent of the Wizards’ dishonesty, casual and banal cruelty, which Elphaba takes on here, only that she may see Glinda again. Not before she loses her sister Nessarose, then her sister’s shoes and is certain Fiyero is dead, therefore, with nothing else to lose, fully embracing her alleged name of “Wicked Witch of the West” and ‘public enemy number one’ the regime claimed her to be since she fell from the sky, then flew like a green fleck above Oz in Defying Gravity at the end of act one.
Having seen the stage show multiple times, and understanding it is a stage show and having reread the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel at least four times in the past two years, I feel I can say in some sort of analytical authority, considering the medium of film and adaptation, this is the best result we could hope for. At least until HBO or AMC makes The Man in High Castle (Prime Video, 2015 to 2019, based on the 1962 realist dystopian novel by Phillip K. Deck). Real life wickedness, or evil, if one will, is casual. It is systematically incremental, slow, preventable, or at least reducible in scale, but it is neither ghoulish nor is it green-skinned and wearing a pointy hat. It is not inherently animal, whether the A in that word is capitalized or not. It is very human. True evil is relative to time, place, social structure and social mores, and it is always banal and something we are all very much capable of, especially if we claim to be inherently morally superior to anyone else or refuse to interrogate our reactionary impulses further. Once more, I will hopefully be pardoned, the pun, the bubble, the wand and the pastel dress are not solely themselves a problem, but we could all benefit from a measure of the green girl’s human objectivity and compassion right now. We must all pop our own bubbles every once in a while, or we will surely be left mourning the ostracized and the never mourned sufficiently from our ivory or emerald tower, alone.
“I never use the words humanist or humanitarian, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature.” – Elphana Thropp to Fiyero, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)
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