Wicked

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

This evening, Wicked becomes the 20th longest-running show on Broadway, eclipsing Avenue Q which, ironically, beat it out to win the Tony for Best Musical in 2004.

I saw Wicked for the first time in January 2007, on tour, from the mezzanine of the Providence Performing Arts Center. It was the very first show in my very first year of regular theatergoing and I fell in love with it. The cast recording has been in steady rotation on my iPod ever since.

And ever since then, I've yearned to see it on Broadway, at the Gershwin Theatre. Well, this month I finally accomplished that goal.

After 2,535 performances, this show looks and sounds fresh and vibrant. Eugene Lee's Tony-winning set is more elaborate than the touring version, extending out along the sides of the stage. It's easy to see why the musical still plays to sold-out houses every week and over Thanksgiving week, took in a record $2 million at the box office.

Built in the 1970s, the 1,900-seat Gershwin is a modern venue with brilliant acoustics. The sound is crisp and clear. The seats are raked so perfectly that there's never anyone's head blocking your view. From my perch in Row V of the orchestra I could have body-surfed clear down to the stage!

If you're of a certain age, you remember what it was like in those pre-VCR, pre-cable days to watch The Wizard of Oz when it aired on television once a year. (The flying monkeys always terrified me!)

Part of the charm of Wicked is the witty and clever way the musical pays homage to the movie. Yes, it's a different plot - the back story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. But I love all of the subtle and not-so-subtle references to the movie, the way some of its most memorable lines are worked into the dialog.

Book writer Winnie Holzman (of My So-Called Life) has done an inspired job stripping away the complexities of Gregory Maguire's very dark novel - which is not for children - and refashioning it for the stage for audiences from preteen on up.

Maguire uses the Wicked Witch of the West to examine the nature of evil. And Holzman doesn't give short shrift to that aspect, with the story of animals being robbed of their power of speech. This is a musical examining how societies often blame their ills on scapegoats and how too few of us speak out, simply going along with the crowd.

The heart of this musical, though, is the relationship between two very different young women who become college roommates and friends - the rich and pampered Glinda (nee Galinda) and the misunderstood, put-upon Elphaba, mocked and shunned because of her green skin. (Among other things, Wicked is a great examination of how cruel adolescents can be.)

Broadway's current Elphaba and Glinda are Dee Roscioli and Erin Mackey and they're great. As the self-absorbed, ambitious Glinda, Mackey is funny without overshadowing her castmate. And Roscioli gets Elphaba's spunk and social conscience, as well as her feelings of awkwardness and longing to belong, to have her family be proud of her instead of embarrassed by her.

The supporting cast includes Michelle Federer, who originated the role, as Elphaba's wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose, P.J. Benjamin as the mysterious Wizard, Kevin Kern as Fieyro, the carefree prince torn between Glinda and Elphaba, and Alex Brightman as the mousy Munchkin Boq.

But the highlight was seeing Rondi Reed play Madame Morrible, the very proper and sinister headmistress of Shiz University. I loved Reed's Tony-winning performance in August: Osage County. The ease with which she captures such a completely different role - and accent - just furthers my admiration for her.

And I cannot say enough how glorious it was to hear Stephen Schwartz' score - so witty and soaring and poignant and catchy - played by a 22-piece orchestra. "For Good" is my favorite song from the score. I sobbed when I heard it the first time and I sobbed again.

How awesome is it that the most tender, heartfelt love song in this musical is not about the romantic love of two people for each other but about the enduring power of an unlikely friendship.

Since friendship plays such a big role it seems fitting to mention that I saw Wicked for the first time at the encouragement of a new friend, Steve on Broadway, whom I'd only met at that point through his blog and through e-mail.

Eventually I learned how much the musical means to Steve and to the love of his life. They have both become my treasured friends and Wicked has become one of my favorite shows. All three have left a handprint on my heart.

Let me tell you, Wicked on tour is terrific and if you have a chance, go see it. But there is something so special about taking in the tuner at its Broadway home. I'm so happy I finally did.

When something Wicked came my way

Five years ago today, on Oct. 30, 2003, Wicked opened on Broadway, at the Gershwin Theatre. Variety offers a good look back at the show's phenomenal success on Broadway and around the world. After 2,065 performances, so many words have been written about this immensely popular musical. But hey, always room for a few more, right?

I have to admit, I was only vaguely aware of Wicked a couple of years ago, when I found Steve on Broadway's blog. Looking through his archive of posts, in December 2006, I realized that he mentioned the musical quite a lot. In the midst of a very lengthy and memorable e-mail exchange, he told me how big a fan he was of the show, and he called it captivating. I didn't know it at the time, but Wicked holds special meaning for Steve and the love of his life.

I don't know if it was a coincidence or the planets aligning or it was simply meant to be, but the touring production of Wicked was making a stop in Providence the very next month. Steve's enthusiasm convinced me to buy a ticket. (And he assured me that those scary flying monkeys from the movie only fly out over the audience in the Broadway production. Whew! That was a big relief.)

The last time I'd been to the theatre was the previous fall, when I saw Hamlet. And before that, it had been nearly a decade, when I saw Fiddler on the Roof in Israel. So I hiked up to my seat in the mezzanine at the Providence Performing Arts Center giddy with anticipation.

And Wicked lived up to the advance billing. From the very beginning, when the dragon's head above the stage comes alive, its mouth opening wide and its eyes turning a fiery red, Wicked captivated me, too.

I loved all of the subtle and not-so-subtle references to The Wizard of Oz, the way many of the memorable lines from the movie are worked into the dialog. (As well as a hilarious shoutout to Evita.)

I loved the way Wicked filled in the back story of a classic and beloved movie with so much cleverness and wit. I mean, I really had no idea that it would be so funny. So that's how the Tin Man and the Scarecrow got to be that way. Who knew?

It cracks me up when I think of Glinda looking at the yellow brick road and saying "I hope they find it. I'm really bad at directions." I felt some of the same sense of amazement that I did when I saw the movie as a child. (And those monkeys still creep me out!)

And I thought the way Glinda (nee Galinda) and Elphaba were drawn: the spoiled rich, self-absorbed party girl and the unpopular, cerebral loner who looks different from everyone else, was so inspired. I'd recently watched the movie of The History Boys and I thought, in some ways, Wicked is a more realistic portrayal of adolescence - in all of its pettiness, jealousy and cruelty.

I started crying when I heard "For Good" and it still makes me cry. How awesome is it that the most tender love song in the musical is not about two lovers but about the enduring power of friendship. When I heard that line, "People come into our lives for a reason," of course I thought about the new friend I'd just made. Even though I went alone, I knew I could e-mail my friend all about the experience, and he'd be thrilled to hear from me.

Since seeing Wicked, I've also read Gregory Maguire's novel. And realizing how book writer Winnie Holzman, composer Stephen Schwartz and director Joe Mantello shaped the musical is pretty fascinating. (I think it's a big improvement. The novel, in my opinion, is much less accessible and certainly much darker. Definitely not for children!)

In the past two years I've seen lots of shows: some that engaged me, some that bored me, some that just left me thinking, "Eh." But rarely have I seen anything like Wicked, which I loved from start to finish. Happy anniversary!

My So-Called Life

I've always been curious about My So-Called Life. The television series gave Claire Danes her first big role and it received a heap of critical praise for its realistic depiction of the lives of teenagers. But the show apparently never found an audience and was canceled after the first season. Until the advent of DVDs, and the release of practically every television program that ever aired, you couldn't watch My So-Called Life. It acquired an almost cult-like status.

My curiosity about the show was piqued even further when I realized that one of the creative forces behind the series was none other than Winnie Holzman, the woman who wrote the book for the wildly popular musical Wicked (a Gratuitous Violins favorite). In my eyes, that just about makes Ms. Holzman a goddess.

So I was eager to plunge into some of her other work, to see, perhaps, whether I could discern the faintest glimmers of Wicked's cast of teenage characters in Holzman's earlier attempt at bringing the anxieties of adolescence to life. (Holzman also wrote for other television series, including The Wonder Years and thirtysomething.)

The 19 episodes of My So-Called Life aired from 1994-1995 on ABC. The series starred a red-haired Claire Danes as 15-year-old Angela Chase, going through all of the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. In some ways it's a typical series - Angela is beginning to distance herself from her parents, she has a pesky younger sister (Lisa Wilhoit), a geeky next-door neighbor whom she can't stand (Devon Gummersall), a new set of friends who don't quite meet with parental approval (A.J. Langer and Wilson Cruz) and a boy she has a crush on, (Jared Leto).

The show, which takes place in a fictional suburb of Pittsburgh, is more serious and realistic than the usual teenage fare. It's absorbing and well-done, but I can see why it wouldn't be everyone's taste. There's a dark, almost gloomy tone to My So-Called Life. Its depiction of issues such as adultery, drug and alcohol abuse, homophobia, school violence, censorship and homelessness make it vastly different from series that portrayed adolescence in a more fun-filled, nostalgic light. This is not Happy Days or Beverly Hills, 90210.

Danes is wonderful in the series. She's blossoming right before her parents' (and our) eyes into a beautiful young woman, but she's still very much the moody, insecure teenager, fighting with her parents, trying to act grown up, trying to attract the attention of a boy she likes, taking risks she shouldn't be taking.

Her parents, played by Tom Irwin and Bess Armstrong, don't always understand what their eldest daughter is feeling, but they know that something is changing. There's a scene where Irwin sees Danes coming out of the shower draped in a towel and tells Armstrong that she shouldn't be parading around the house like that. We kind of understand. While Irwin is quiet and understated, Armstrong is sometimes a little too shrill and annoying for my taste.

To me, the other standout performance in My So-Called Life is Wilson Cruz as Enrique "Rickie" Vasquez. Cruz, an openly gay actor, drew on some of his own life experiences to create a thoughtful and sympathetic portrait of a teenager coming to terms with his sexual orientation. When Ricky does finally come to accept who he is, it's one of the most powerful and inspiring moments in the series.

There are theater connections to My So-Called Life in addition to Holzman and Wicked. The show featured two members of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater Company, Irwin and Jeff Perry, who had a recurring guest spot as a teacher. Perry is currently on Broadway with the Steppenwolf ensemble in the hit play August: Osage County. I saw the show in November, but I didn't actually recognize Perry in the series until I was listening to the audio commentary and heard Danes and Holzman mention his name. So that was a nice surprise! Cruz has played the role of the drag queen Angel on Broadway in Rent. And Danes made her Broadway debut last fall as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, a performance that I'm sorry I missed.

While the stars of My So-Called Life have moved on to other projects with varying degrees of success, Langer, who played Danes' rebellious, wild child friend Rayanne Graff, has probably moved furthest from her role in the series. She's now Lady Courtenay, married to Lord Charles Courtenay, son of the 18th Earl of Devon.

Now that I've watched My So-Called Life, it's easy to spot some of the same themes and characters that Holzman wrote about so believably in Wicked - teenage cliques, Elphaba's anxiety at feeling different and not fitting in, a desire to rebel.

In a 2005 article in The Advocate, Holzman's daughter, Savannah Dooley, describes her mother's work on the book for Wicked this way: "It is rich with her trademarks: a story about an outsider, fully realized characters, and some subversive political commentary."

Wicked

Since I started 2007 seeing a touring production of the musical "Wicked" it's only fitting that I ended the year reading Gregory Maguire's novel. I finished it tonight.

Let's start out by saying that the two really don't have very much in common. They're so different that it's a bit disingenuous, if not downright deceptive, for the publisher to use the same cover on the mass-market paperback that's displayed on the posters and cast CD for the musical.

Where "Wicked" the musical is uplifting and family friendly with a clear message about friendship and not judging people by the way they look, "Wicked" the novel is violent and ominous and so crammed with ideas that by the end, I have to admit I felt more than a little bewildered about what it all meant. And while the musical is perfect for all ages, the book is clearly geared toward older teenagers or adults.

Maguire sets out to tell the story of the Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, (whose name is an homage to L. Frank Baum, the 19th-century creator of the Oz books). His Land of Oz is a rich, complex fantasy world ruled over by a malevolent wizard, a world in which Animals (with a capital "A") talk and think and hold positions of authority.

Elphaba's father is a minister and religion plays a big part in the story. Unfortunately, the various belief systems are never fully described. (The book really could have used a glossary.) Elphaba's sister, Nessarose, who ends up as the ruler of Munchkinland and presides over its secession from Oz, is fiercely devout. In the musical she's confined to a wheelchair. In the novel, she's born without arms. It's only her magical shoes that allow her to stand upright.

Maguire obviously intends the novel to be a kind of grab bag reflection on the dangers of unchecked political power, the ease with which minorities can be stripped of their rights when the larger society simply looks the other way, how horrible acts can be hidden behind innocuous language. He offers a condemnation of the 20th century's worst evils - his writing conjures up images of Nazi Germany, Eastern European pogroms and radical terrorist groups.

In this world, Elphaba is set apart not only by her green skin and intense fear of water, but by a highly developed moral sensibility. It reaches a zenith when she's a student at Shiz University, where she meets spoiled rich girl Galinda, country boy Boq and tribal prince Fiyero.

Elphaba is shocked at what is happening to Dr. Dillamond, a goat who teaches biology, and to other Animals. Gradually, they "lose their rights, one by one. Just slowly enough so that it's hard to see as a coherent political campaign." When she meets the Wizard to protest, he tells her "it is not for a girl, or a student, or a citizen to assess what is wrong. This is the job of leaders, and why we exist."

After her unsettling confrontation with the Wizard, Elphaba leaves Shiz and dedicates herself to fighting for Animal rights. She joins a shadowy, underground terror cell whose purpose is never fully explored. Fiyero reconnects with her, and they become lovers. Soon, Elphaba's attempt at a political assassination goes awry, and it's strongly implied that she's the cause of Fiyero's death.

Elphaba spends several years in a nunnery, then travels to Fiyero's tribal home to ask forgiveness from his widow. She brings along a small boy who may or may not be her child with Fiyero. Eventually, Elphaba returns to Munchkinland where she has a final confrontation with the people who have played important roles in her life: Nessarose, her father, Galinda, who is now called Glinda, and finally, with Dorothy.

Maguire has said that the inspiration for "Wicked" came from a desire to explore the nature of evil: "I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration."

While Elphaba does reprehensible things, she's portrayed more as misguided than truly monstrous. And she's certainly not amoral. She's genuinely concerned about the Wizard's totalitarian rule, about what's happening to the Animals, and she appears truly guilty over her part in Fiyero's death. Elphaba reminds me more of one of those overly idealistic 1960s college students who ended up getting radicalized and joining groups like the Weathermen and going over the edge into violence.

It seems to me that the truly evil people in "Wicked" are the Wizard and Madame Morrible, the head of Elphaba's college at Shiz. They're the ones who act undemocratically, who try to take rights away from the Animals. They're the ones who seem to me to be truly monstrous. Yet their backgrounds and motivations and actions are hardly explored at all by Maguire.

I'm glad I read "Wicked," even though I'm not a big fan of the fantasy genre. And I greatly prefer the musical version. Reading the novel gave me have an even deeper appreciation for the accomplishment of book writer Winnie Holzman and composer Stephen Schwartz. It's interesting to see what they took from Maguire's novel and what they tossed out.

They kept fairly close to the political points that Maguire wanted to make, even though they probably didn't keep a single line of dialogue. The main characters are pretty much the same, although their interactions are vastly different. Schwartz and Holzman basically turned them into American teenagers. The political element is still there, although thankfully vastly simplified. The religious references are almost completely eliminated.

While almost all of the changes improved the story, one was a little disappointing. In the book, Fiyero is described as "dark-skinned," but he's generally portrayed on stage by a white actor. It seems to me that the producers of "Wicked" lost a chance to make the cast more diverse and inclusive. Perhaps they simply wanted to make Elphaba's "greenness" stand out more.

What Holzman and Schwartz have done that's absolutely brilliant is to make the story lighter, funnier, more poignant, more human. The musical is much more a story of the pain of adolescence, of the power of friendship, of feeling like you just don't fit in. They added an entirely new layer of meaning that was pretty much absent from Maguire's novel and made the story more universal. (No pun intended!) By streamlining the story, they've made the message simpler, more direct, more thought-provoking.

Coincidentally, I finished reading "Wicked" the same day that my friend Steve posted his review of seeing the musical in Tokyo. For Steve and his beloved, "Wicked" is their musical. His reasons sum up perfectly what Holzman and Schwartz have done: it's the "ingenious inside-out twisting of "The Wizard Of Oz" fable we grew up on, or our hope from its message that different can be a virtue, or our love of its clever and often soaring tunes.''

Gregory Maguire owes Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman big time. Just as MGM did a nearly a century ago with L. Frank Baum's work, Holzman and Schwartz have taken Maguire's tale about a complex fantasy world and refashioned it into a classic.

One final note: I once worked in the small upstate New York village of Chittenango, where L. Frank Baum was born. When I was there, the village was clearly eager to cash in on its Oz connection: there was an annual Oz parade, a store called Auntie Em's and a sidewalk painted in yellow brick. A real estate agent showed me several apartments in rundown old buildings where, she assured me, Baum had lived as a child. Fortunately or unfortunately, I never took any of them.