Wicked (musical)

[cahn]

So, I might have watched it. I quite enjoyed it -- it's sort of this last decade's Les Mis, isn't it? with the smoke and the dancing and special effects and big chorus numbers and pop wholesome faux-deep message? And I'm a total sucker for friendships, so there's that. (It is hilarious to me that the love interest seems really rather like an afterthought tacked on.) Also, was Elphaba supposed to be the heroine? Because it seemed quite clear that Galinda was way more interesting, even though she got no solos. Elphaba really didn't have nearly as much of a character arc. (But hey, I also find "Thank Goodness" a much more interesting song, character-wise, than "Defying Gravity" -- it's so interesting to hear Galinda sing "I couldn't be happier!" with the layers of, well, unhappiness -- so there's that.)

But... is it just me, or does this whole musical make no sense? That is, huge sections of the plot seem to have been shoehorned into place in ways that are just... incoherent and random.

-It makes no sense to me that Elphaba has two tickets to the Emerald City and she gives one to Galinda (sorry, "it's Glinda now!") instead of to her sister, given what we've seen so far up to that point regarding their relationships. Unless the Emerald City is really, like, disabled-inaccessible or something. But there was no explanation of why she'd pick Glinda over her sister, when she's never done so before.

The rest of Act 1 I was mostly okay with. Act 2... was when things really started falling apart.

-So it's this big deal how Elphaba is the only one who can perform magic out of the book, and then Nessarose, on her first try, can do it? Sure, she might have mispronounced it, but clearly she's got potential, yeah? So... uh?

-Elphaba is missing for a long time, and then suddenly she shows up... at the Wizard's palace. Um, what? Why? I guess to set the monkeys free? Why then? Why randomly after she's had this showdown with her sister? Very confusing.

-Elphaba and Fiyero get to sing this song which, if I understand correctly, boils down to, "Hey, this relationship might fall apart immediately, but at least we had hot sex in the meantime." Which, um. I guess is a perfectly valid lifestyle choice! But not quite what I expected from their characters, nor does it seem to bear any resemblance to what they say in the dialogue.

-Fiyero is presumed dead... and suddenly Elphaba becomes the Wicked Witch of the West? Complete with personality change! Maybe it's just the actress I saw, but it was weird and jarring. And then she changes right back when she learns Fiyero is alive, just in time to have a touching duet with Glinda. (Which I love, but still.) I got a bit of whiplash there. It's another reason I like Glinda's arc better; it's much more gradual.

-Elphaba insists that Glinda not tell everyone the whole story because... because why? Well, because then the Wicked Witch wouldn't be wicked like in the original Baum, and then we couldn't have "No One Mourns the Wicked" as a song, I guess? Really it's a giant chunk of canon-compliance shoehorning; honestly, this is the part of the musical that makes the least sense. Glinda is basically the only power left in Oz (how it happens that Morrible and the Wizard bow to her will just because she figures out they are corrupt, I have no idea, especially since Morrible has magic and Glinda doesn't really; that's another issue) so why would they, as Elphaba claims, turn against her? And even if they would now, why not tell Oz later? Just. Does Not Make Sense.

-Glinda gets the book of spells. Which she can't read. I guess we saw from Nessarose's example that maybe this doesn't matter, but still... what?

-Fiyero and Elphaba agree they can never come back to Oz and Glinda can't know they're alive... why? Is the fear that Glinda will one day totally do a personality change thing like Elphaba did? I think it's really just for canon compliance, and so that Glinda can have her little song of pathos at the end, although I think it would be equally as sad (though differently) if she did know Elphaba was alive, but would not see her for years (if ever).

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I saw a production with Eden Espinosa as Elphaba, and she filled out the role with enough nuance to make me think that the problem is the writing/staging, not the character per se. I mean, c'mon, of COURSE Elphaba can't REALLY be the protagonist: it's an alto part! (grr.)

Yes, plot holes large enough to drive a fleet of Hummers through. Have you read the book? It is also not good, but differently and a little less senselessly. My short take is here for musical with a link thence for the book.

ETA and I see that in my post I forgot one thing: the orchestration is pathetically thin. Pathetic.

[cahn]

Yeah, there's something really weird about the writing (which is weak in general). Because it seems clear to me Elphaba is supposed to be the heroine -- she gets far more on-stage time than Galinda, she gets the solos, she gets the blockbuster Defying Gravity number, she gets the guy, she gets to be the good character; Galinda is pretty much superficial supporting cast for all of that, whose only solo is a reprise of Elphaba's big number -- and yet Elphaba's songs are all in support of a character arc that is quite flat, and therefore her songs kind of don't hold that much interest for me, where Galinda gets a much more interesting arc. And like you say, it's not the character; Elphaba's character ought to have a really nice arc. I think it's that (as you say in your post) they've written out the moral ambiguity, which makes Elphaba more sympathetic but also less interesting, while Galinda retains some of the moral ambiguity and is hence more interesting. (And a lot of this is no doubt also due to my having listened to the recording a billion times, and Kristin Chenoweth being very clearly a much much stronger voice-actress than Idina Menzel, and always having that in my head.)

And, hee, it's true -- altos should get to be the heroes more often!

I must admit I gave up on the book halfway through, although I think now I am going to have to read it again to figure out exactly where the plot holes come in. On the whole, I think I preferred the musical, gaping incoherence and all, because at least it played up the friendship, and there were lots of duets, which apparently in my head papers over a multitude of sins.

Hm, the orchestration didn't bother me -- I clearly have gotten used to a pathetic level of orchestration in my Broadway musicals...

[thistleingrey]

The orchestration is sort of chirpy and cute. :P More accompaniment than orchestration.

Reason and I listened to the soundtrack again this morning before I wrote the current comment. Agreed on Chenoweth, of course, although Hilty, Glinda in the production I saw, is also good, in a more vivid and less studied way. Agreed also on the arc problem, and the pleasure of friendship + duets.

Seriously, it's a win when the lead alto isn't dead or exiled. A few musicals get around this with lead mezzos (indeed, Menzel is a mezzo, which is part of why she sounds so light as Elphaba, IMO), but it's not the same.

ETA I think that one reason why the musical is so flat is that it couldn't choose between "it's okay to be green" and "everyone wants to be popular/that girl." It wanted to be deep enough to acknowledge misfits, but it reduces Nessa Rose/Bock to a few bars (neatly removing Glinda's culpability in her maltreatment of Bock's crush) that fail to address whether both NR and Bock want to believe the lie she sets up for them. NR likes the attention, but would she want someone who's been assigned to her if she knew? Etc. And Elphaba's "don't lose sight of who you are" is meaningless in context of the musical's story because she does; she performs defiance in a way that sacrifices self instead of embracing it, because she gives in to the lies others have constructed for her. What difference, then, whether those lies are Glinda's in-the-musical-well-meaning ones (less well meaning in the book) or those of the characters who've never considered her their friend.

[cahn]

Do you know about Smash? (The page itself looks dreadful, but the extended trailer I really like.) I am SO EXCITED for this. Megan Hilty and Christian Borle and other awesome actors that I would be also extremely excited about if I didn't live under a rock, and Broadway musicals, and duets! Yay! (Yes, I imagine it's likely to be candy drama. But candy drama with music!)

Yes, I agree what you say about Nessa Rose/Bock. I think that story could have been really interesting, but the way they did it, it sort of lost all its momentum. (That being said, I did like the part where Bock doesn't tell her the true reason he invited her, and thus bears his own share of the culpability.)

And Elphaba's "don't lose sight of who you are" is meaningless in context of the musical's story because she does; she performs defiance in a way that sacrifices self instead of embracing it, because she gives in to the lies others have constructed for her. What difference, then, whether those lies are Glinda's in-the-musical-well-meaning ones (less well meaning in the book) or those of the characters who've never considered her their friend.

I really like what you say here. Hm. I guess I would say that with Glinda's constructions (in the musical), it's more that Elphaba's still trying to feel her way towards who she is; it's a very high school thing (at least from my perspective), and a little more understandable, to me, than the defiance that sets her up to give in to becoming the Wicked Witch. (And she doesn't in the end give in to that particular (Glinda's) construction, though she does to the others'.) So that would be the difference, to me. (And the other difference is that Glinda does, a bit, recognize that Elphaba has something she lacks, which IMO comes out in the reprise of "I'm not that girl.")

[scaramouche]

Bless, you've finally seen the show! And yes, a whole lot of the musical doesn't make sense -- even taking away how it doesn't fit in with the bigger Oz stories it's supposed to be derived from (which is my biggest problem with it, really) -- the internal logic is helluva inconsistent. That said, I was (and still am, I suppose) fascinated with how it's ballooned into a phenomenon.

Who were the actresses you saw as Elphaba and Glinda?

[cahn]

YES I KNOW FIVE YEARS LATE FOR EVERYTHING :) Five years from now maybe I'll post on Book of Mormon or something!

Yeah, the Baum and the Maguire and the musical... there's no way to reconcile all of them! I keep trying, in my head, and failing miserably. But it's the inconsistency of the internal logic that really bothers me; for some reason that bothers me a lot more.

So, I saw Mandy Gonzales/Katie Rose Clarke. I also looked up some extremely pixellated footage of Idina Menzel/Kristin Chenoweth (and of course have listened to the recording about a billion times; I did know about the recording well before now :) ). I really liked Gonzales' Elphaba; I thought she did a better job of selling it than Menzel. (In retrospect I think my issues were due to the writing, not the actress -- we have to be sympthatic to Elphaba, but she still has to end up as the Wicked Witch, and that inspires this kind of psychotic break.) I have always thought Chenoweth was a super-amazing voice actor, and having her voice in my head has kind of spoiled me for anyone else in the role, even though I think Clarke did a perfectly adequate job.

Yes, the phenomenon of Wicked as a... thing rather astonishes me. I guess it's the underdog-misunderstood-girl thing combined with the Oz thing and the flashy lights?

[ase]

When I saw the SF production last summer, I felt like Elphaba was better played than when you saw it, but the plot only makes opera sense: maximum emotion, minimum logic. Also, I don't love the soundtrack the way I loved Rent or Chess. (Chess is a terrible musical with a great soundtrack.) There's a few songs I like a lot, like "Defying Gravity" and, well, Elphaba and Fiyero's duet, for classic dramatic irony! But I like musicals for music and Wicked did better with fancy staging.

[cahn]

Honestly, in retrospect I think I was totally maligning the actress, who was quite good. Really the problem is the writing, in which we have to be sympathetic to Elphaba pretty much the whole time, including the ending, but she still has to be the Wicked Witch of the West who is not sympathetic, which leads to this kind of psychotic break... The actress I saw did do a good job of making you see that the seeds were there the whole time, but still it's a bit much for me when she suddenly has to turn back into Sympathetic!Elphaba once she realizes Fiyero is alive.

the plot only makes opera sense: maximum emotion, minimum logic.

Hee, I love the phrase "opera sense." So true! And if I think about it as an opera I feel much more okay about it (probably because most of the operas I know have far worse logic...)

Hm. Maybe I will look up Chess. I didn't love Rent, I think because I was far too old when I heard the soundtrack, so instead of "Oh wow how cool," my reaction was more like, "What losers!" (My friend who has pretty much exactly the same taste I do in music/musicals loves Rent, because she actually got to it at the appropriate time.) I love the Wicked soundtrack, because it's got Chenoweth, and I must confess I really love "For Good," but I've got a lot of baggage there with duets and singing and female friendship and friendships changing lives and so on, and it rather blatantly pushes all those buttons.

[ase]

Wicked makes zero sense, except maybe as a big Elphaba/Glinda BFF/love story. I read the book, I watched the musical, I have no idea what Broadway was thinking when they adapted Maguire's book. However, Idina Menzel got another hit musical out of it, so I am willing to roll with it. And the musical hits a lot of women-friendship buttons, which is great, but also frustrating that it's so unusual.

Chess is, by most reports, not a great musical; I love the soundtrack anyway. The American recording is sometimes considered stronger, but I love the British soundtrack on the strength of first exposure and "Nobody's Side". "Rent" came to me at about the right time to be uncritical, even if my loyalties are with Bennie. I can still love "La Vie Boheme" and "No Day But Today" most days.

[cahn]

And the musical hits a lot of women-friendship buttons, which is great, but also frustrating that it's so unusual.

YES. For this alone I would like it. Well, those bits, anyway. (There are certainly quite a lot of parts/characters I found actively boring.)

Yeah, my sympathies are with Bennie (if you couldn't guess...)