‘Wicked’ isn’t your
grandma’s ‘Wizard of Oz’

Robyn’s ’Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

The best Broadway show I never saw is Wicked. The multimillion-dollar spectacular is based on the Gregory Maguire top-selling novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Both the Broadway show and the book tell a compelling story, that of the witches of Oz before and just shortly after a little girl named Dorothy accidentally crash-lands a house on top of one of them.
The Broadway show takes some liberties with the book, but the heartbeat remains the same.
For my birthday last year, my husband asked me what I wanted. Since Wicked had just come to Philadelphia, I told him, "Two tickets to Wicked please, and if that’s too expensive you can just get me one . . . you won’t mind circling the theater ’til I’m through?"
But with Ticketmaster being what it is, the tickets did prove too expensive, so I have had to settle for the book and CD. The book my husband doesn’t mind so much, because that’s quiet, but the CD is another matter altogether, since I blast it throughout the house and the car whenever I have the chance.
Seems he’s not a Broadway-show-tunes kind of guy. I’ve also managed to catch bits and pieces of the production on YouTube, not the same as being there I know, but beggars can’t be choosers. Technically, I probably shouldn’t be writing about a show I’ve never seen, but if I only wrote about those things that I’m an expert on, this column would have lasted all of about a week and a half.
The two main characters are Glinda the "good witch" and Elpheba the "bad witch." Glinda is the typical all-American (or is that all-Ozian?), blonde-haired, blue-eyed golden-girl cheerleader type. Elpheba is so named by Mr. Maguire in tribute to Lyman Frank Baum, the man who started all this "Wizardmania" when he penned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Get it? L. F. B. . . . Elpheba. She also is not as fortunate as Glinda. Seems she’s the result of a one-night stand her mother had with a mysterious stranger (who has a singing voice suspiciously similar to the future Wizard of Oz) while her husband, an itinerant preacher, was out proselytizing.
When Elpheba is born with a skin tone resembling that of the Emerald City, she is shunned by society. Elpheba is shipped off to Shiz, the boarding school where she and Glinda meet. These two young women get off to a very rocky start but manage to painstakingly form an unlikely friendship.
Later Elpheba’s sister Nessarose arrives in town. Nessa ultimately becomes the ruby-shoes-wearing wicked witch of the east. Things get even more complicated when the future Tin Man and Scarecrow arrive on the scene in the forms of lovelorn munchkin-boy Boq and the overconfident and cocky Fiyero. There are love triangles and love quadrangles to spare. The story moves along as Elpheba, with a heart the size to match her hat, steps in to help save the persecuted animals of Oz. Things go awry and Elpheba is grossly misjudged, something she is not unused to in her life.
There are too many morality lessons in this brilliant story to cover in one short column. Suffice to say that what draws me to these two flawed characters, one supposedly "good" and one supposedly "bad," is that through it all they learn to accept each other for who and what they are, no matter their past, no matter their future, no matter what societal label they may bear. Because, as these particular witches have learned, they are in each other’s life for a reason.
As Glinda and Elpheba sing to each other in the finale of the show, Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good, we should all be so lucky.
So while this show has deservedly won more than its fair share of awards, in the end it’s really about the hearts of these two remarkable women. Which, if you ask me, outshine all the lights on Broadway.
I’m still holding out hope that some day I will get to see Wicked. Until then I will just have to be content with emulating it. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net