WE’RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD
Main Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande
Director: John Chu
I arrived at Iguazu National Park in my continuing quest to secure zombie talent for Shuffle Along: The Walking Dead Musical. Dom Bellina, my contact in the Brazilian underworld, has put me in touch with a network of National Park rangers who apparently know where the zombies hang out in the wild and I’m to meet with them in the morning at the top of the falls to discuss a cattle call audition. My headquarters for this trip is at the Hotel las Cateratas which overlooks the falls on the Brazilian side. I have booked the Presidential Suite for myself, and I have a crew turning the pool cabana into a room where we can teach several dozen zombies a jazz combination and vocalize them to determine ranges. If they have the talent I believe, we can choose our cast within a day and then maybe teach them the final combination from A Chorus Line which we can film for promotional purposes.
It’s quite lovely here on the side of the falls, which are quite massive. I took a little walk along the side of the canyon and down to the bottom of the torrent with a local cameraman and decided that I shouldn’t pass up the opportunity of using one of nature’s more stunning backdrops. I therefore, quickly improvised a tap routine over the bridge out to the observation platform, only slipping three or four times in the water underfoot from the overspray. Then, once out on the platform, I sang an absolutely stunning chorus of Orinoco Flow a cappella – I know it’s the wrong South American river, but most Americans won’t know that. I should be able to use the footage as B roll for the spring campaign for the new line of VickiWear.
When I got back to the top of the gorge (thank god for a convenient elevator), I felt like settling in with a film. Unfortunately, the hotel is located deep within the national park and it would be a minimum of a half an hour drive to reach anything and as night was rapidly falling, I decided that was not the wisest idea, so I retired to my suite and looked at what might be available on demand. I noticed that the new film version of Wicked (Part 1) had just become available for home viewing for a fee and, as I had not yet had a chance to see it, decided to give it a whirl, pulling it up on my iPad and then casting it to the big screen TV in the living room. Internet service is not always the most reliable in the jungles of Brazil but I was able to eventually get the film streaming with only occasional jerkiness.
For those who have been sleeping under a rock for the last thirty years or so, Wicked tells the familiar story of The Wizard of Oz, but through the eyes of the piece’s chief villain, the Wicked Witch of the West. It began life as a novel by Gregory Maguire that became popular with the LGBTQI community as he highlighted the queer themes that had been lurking under the surface of L. Frank Baum’s original stories. (If you haven’t read any of the original Oz books, do so – they are a trip). In the early 2000s, Stephen Schwartz took the piece and created a Broadway musical spectacle that continues to run to full houses more than twenty years later. The musical was not a huge critical success (it lost the Tony for Best Musical to Avenue Q), but the public ate it up with its story of girl power, rivalry, and friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Galinda (later Glinda) the Good. Film adaptation has been discussed in Hollywood circles for fifteen years or so but the pieces didn’t start to come together until 2020, and then were significantly delayed by the pandemic.
The decision was made to break the material in two in order to expand the material to better explain plot points and relationships. Anyone who has seen the stage version of Wicked knows that there’s way too much plot stuffed into way too short a running time, especially when things need to be interrupted for song and dance every few minutes. The running time of this film, which covers Act I of the stage show, is longer than the whole of the Broadway running time so there is indeed plenty of time to let the material breathe. In fact there’s too much time; the material would have been served better with some judicious trims, especially in the final number, Defying Gravity, which takes about five minutes on stage and about forty minutes on film.
The plot isn’t all that complicated. In Munchkinland, the governor is unlucky in his family life. His wife dallies with a traveling salesman and the result is a daughter born with green skin who grows up to be Cynthia Erivo. Elphaba, for that is the girl’s name, eventually gains a younger sister, Nessa Rose (Marissa Bode) who uses a wheelchair. The two go off to University where Elphaba’s talents are noticed by Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and where Elphaba ends up rooming with the kewpie doll Galinda (Ariana Grande) who combines Barbie, Elle Woods, and Rosa Klebb in one neat tiny package. There’s a romantic rivalry over the handsome prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) and the hapless Boq (Ethan Slater) pines for Galinda but ends up having to settle for Nessa Rose. Both girls eventually are off to see the wizard (Jeff Goldblum) in the Emerald City where Elphaba recognizes she’s being set up to be used by a not very nice regime and she uses her power to turn the tables. Some flying monkeys are created and then we have to wait until this coming Thanksgiving to find out what happens next.
The end result is that Wicked is a feast with a few too many dessert courses leaving one with a bit of a tummy ache. John Chu, who directed Crazy Rich Asians and then showed that he could handle a musical with the film version of In the Heights, stuffs so much into the movie that one leaves a bit overloaded. The film was made predominantly on huge practical sets which are stuffed with detail and extras and day players doing all sorts of distracting things. There are dozens of homages and easter eggs which recall various versions of the Oz story from the original book and drawings to the famous MGM technicolor musical (the opening credits sequence including an aerial shot in which we are, of course, taken over a rainbow), and the Broadway show (including having Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel, the original Galinda and Elphaba on Broadway show up for an extended cameo as entertainers in the Emerald City).
While the film is long, it rarely lags (until that ending sequence) as there is a lot for it to get through in terms of character relationships and plot (both of which get short shrift in the stage production). We learn a good deal more about Elphaba, Galinda, and their friends. There are a few new characters created for the film, especially a posse of mean girls for Galinda to hang out with (of whom the standout is Bowen Yang). Both Boq and Fiyero get more time to round out their characters and their like/love relationships.
Wicked is held together by Cynthia Erivo’s stunning performance as Elphaba. As a performer of African descent, she channels all of the vulnerability and anxiousness and resolve of outsider status gained from a lifetime’s experience and it explodes out from the screen. She’s a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination. Next to her, Ariana Grande, in what should be a coequal lead, pales a bit and comes across as more of a supporting performer. There’s nothing wrong with her interpretation and she is charming, but she can’t match what Erivo does. The supporting cast are all just fine and Johnathan Bailey, as Fiyero, cements his star credentials earned in Bridgerton as he dances through life. My favorite, however, is Michelle Yeoh who turns rapidly from good to evil and yet makes the whole transition a coherent character.
The musical numbers are well sung and there’s some catchy choreography – the book slapping dance from What is This Feeling? has already inspired thousands of Tik Tok videos as every dance troupe, sorority, or bunch of backstage theatre kids have recreated it in every possible venue. The two big songs from Act I – Popular and Defying Gravity are intact. The former is given a much smaller scale making it a bit more palatable than the operatic sweep of the latter which make it a bit too too much in pretty much every way. Dancing Through Life, here staged in a college library full of wheels of books, hits the right combination of charm and production number to become the best musical moment. Johnathan Bailey’s insouciant charm helps a lot as well.
By all means see Wicked. You’re going to have to if you want to make any sense of Part II when it arrives in November
Green bottle. Bubble riding. Burning in effigy. Gratuitous sugar glider. Goat instruction. Boat arrivals. Granny hat. Train journey. Hot air balloon. Wing bursting.
Originally from Seattle Washington, land of mist, coffee and flying salmon, Mrs. Norman Maine sprang to life, full grown like Athena, from Andy’s head during a difficult period of life shortly after his relocation to Alabama.
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