Posted by Runshouse21 at nytgate1.nytimes.com on November 18, 2003 at 14:46:00:
In Reply to: WICKED posted by Elfy on November 18, 2003 at 14:39:41:
: Awhile ago I had posted about a great book I was reading by Gregory McGuire called "Wicked" which is the story of the Wizard of Oz in prequel form from the Wicked Witch's view point. It's phenomenal!
: Even better..it just got picked up to be a play at the Gershwin theatre! Anyone interested should either pick up the book or check out the play. Here's a link..
You are a bit late it came out a few weeks ago but you may still be interested in reading this.
October 31, 2003, Friday
NYTIMES
MOVIES, PERFORMING ARTS/WEEKEND DESK
THEATER REVIEW; There's Trouble In Emerald City
By BEN BRANTLEY
SHE'S flying! She's actually flying!
No, not that winged monkey who levitates over the audience. And not the slinky babe with green skin on the broom, though she definitely has her sky-scraping moments. No, the one I'm talking about is that improbably small woman in the white dress, the one who doesn't even need that floating mechanical bubble she uses for transportation.
That's Kristin Chenoweth, who is currently giving jaw-dropping demonstrations of the science of show-biz aeronautics in ''Wicked,'' the Technicolorized sermon of a musical that opened last night at the Gershwin Theater. Playing Glinda the Good Witch in this equally arch and earnest show, a revisionist look at ''The Wizard of Oz,'' Ms. Chenoweth must put across jokes and sight gags that could make angels fall.
Never for a second, though, does she threaten to crash to earth. Even lying down, Ms. Chenoweth -- who performed similar magic in ''You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown'' four years ago (and won a Tony) -- remains airborne, proving that in the perilous skies of Broadway, nothing can top undiluted star power as aviation fuel.
Be grateful, very grateful, that Ms. Chenoweth, who spent a brief exile in the land of sitcoms, has returned to the stage with none of the routinized glibness associated with weekly television. She provides the essential helium in a bloated production that might otherwise spend close to three hours flapping its oversized wings without taking off.
Lightness of touch is not the salient characteristic of this politically indignant deconstruction of L. Frank Baum's ''Oz'' tales. Built on songs by Stephen Schwartz (''Pippin'') and a book by Winnie Holzman (adapted from Gregory Maguire's novel of the same title), the show is steeped in talent.
There is, for starters, Idina Menzel, the vulpine vocal powerhouse who created the role of the omnisexual Maureen in ''Rent'' and who here brings her larynx of steel to the role of Glinda's dearest rival, Elphaba, a k a the Wicked Witch of the West. (Wicked, by the way, turns out to be a morally relative word, but let's not open that can of semantics.)
The director of ''Wicked'' is the understandably in-demand Joe Mantello (''Take Me Out,'' ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune''). The top-flight designers include Eugene Lee (sets), Susan Hilferty (costumes) and Kenneth Posner (lighting). And the overstuffed cast roster features both gold-standard veterans (Joel Grey, Carole Shelley) and bright rising talents (Norbert Leo Butz, Christopher Fitzgerald).
Yet it's hard to avoid the impression that whenever Ms. Chenoweth leaves the stage, ''Wicked'' loses its wit, while its swirling pop-eretta score sheds any glimmer of originality. There are visual and verbal jokes aplenty throughout this thorned re-creation of Baum's enchanted land, where Glinda and Elphaba get to know each other long before a little brat named Dorothy shows up. But more often than not, the humor brings to mind a slightly sweaty young college professor with a social conscience, hoping to win over his students by acting funky and cracking wise.
The story, as in Mr. Maguire's novel, is a tale of two witches: the superficial, self-adoring, cosmetically perfect Glinda and the restless, dissastified, highly intelligent Elphaba, who, having grown up with green skin in a white wizard's world, smarts from the stigma of looking different.
The contrast between the young women, who wind up as reluctant roommates at sorcery school, is used to examine a society that values surface over substance, the illusion of doing good over the genuinely noble act. It goes without saying that you don't have to squint to find parallels with a certain contemporary Western nation in which artful presidential photo ops win more votes than legislative change.
Take, for example, this declaration from the Wizard of Oz himself (Mr. Grey), who (as per Baum) is really an American émigré in Emerald City: ''When I first got here, there was discord and discontent. And where I come from, everyone knows: The best way to bring folks together is to give them a really good enemy.''
And remember those winged monkeys that were so scary in the 1939 movie version? In ''Wicked,'' the Wizard plans to use them as spies to ''report on subversive animal activity.'' Animals, by the way, once had the power of speech in the land of Oz, but they are fast falling victim to a persecution campaign that would transform them into, well, animals.
There's a similarly political backstory for many of the major elements of the original ''Oz'' tale, including the transformation of Dorothy's famous sidekicks, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. But the show's central focus is Elphaba, who soon discovers an affinity for the oppressed of Oz.
That's how Elphaba, the brightest student at Shiz University (which deliberately summons images of the Hogwarts school from the Harry Potter books), becomes a rebel with a broomstick. And how ''Wicked'' at moments bizarrely comes to read as an allegory of those privileged student dissidents from the 1960's and 70's who traded beer blasts for Molotov cocktails. (Think ''Weathermen! The Musical.'')
That's one side, anyway, of the lopsided equation that is ''Wicked.'' The other side involves the ambivalent, ever-shifting relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, in which the adversarial women learn from each other and which recalls sobfests about female friendships like the movie ''Beaches.'' (You keep expecting Glinda to start singing, ''Did you ever know you were my hero, Elphaba?'')
As a parable of fascism and freedom, ''Wicked'' so overplays its hand that it seriously dilutes its power to disturb. Much of the impact of Baum's original novel, like that of so many fantasy stories, came from haunting, symbolic figures that readers interpret on their own terms. Though there have been numerous literary analyses of Baum's ''Oz'' as a coded case for populism and agrarian reform, the book never feels like a tract.
''Wicked,'' on the other hand, wears its political heart as if it were a slogan button. This is true not only of the dialogue, but also of Mr. Schwartz's generically impassioned songs, which have that to-the-barricades sound of the omninously underscored anthems of ''Les Misérables.'' Though the talk is festooned with cutely mangled words (''swankified,'' ''thrillified,'' ''gratitution'') that bring to mind the language of Smurfs, there's a rock-hard lecture beneath the preciousness. Mr. Mantello reconciles the gap between form and content only in Ms. Chenoweth's performance.
The show comes closest to realizing its dark, admonitory vision in Mr. Lee's sets. An ingeniously arranged technoscape of wheels and cogs, overseen by the wondrous metal dragon that rests atop the proscenium, this Oz suggests a lite version of the futurist city of Fritz Lang's ''Metropolis.'' And Ms. Hilferty has supplied costumes that transform the ensemble members into something like the creepy, mutating figures in Bosch paintings.
They are not an especially frolicsome bunch by Broadway musical standards. And the choreographer Wayne Cilento's ''musical staging'' registers as a series of spasmodic, disconnected poses that suggest that the dehumanization of the Ozians is already well under way.
Yet at the same time, ''Wicked'' just wants to have fun, and most of the cast members are hard pressed to find a balance between grinning ebullience and scowling satire. (It makes you appreciate the sharply honed double edge of ''Urinetown.'') Ms. Shelley, as the school's sinister headmistress, stays in high gargoyle gear throughout. As the craven, scheming Wizard, Mr. Grey struggles valiantly against his natural impulse to make the audience like him (and loses).
Michelle Federer, as Elphaba's wheelchair-bound sister, embodies a clunky psychological subtext with surprising grace. Mr. Fitzgerald's Puckish charm gets lost in the role of a nerdy Munchkin. And the quirky brilliance of Mr. Butz (''Thou Shalt Not''), who plays a pampered prince pursued by both leading witches, is drowned in standard-issue camouflage that recalls every hunky hero of the Disney musicals on Broadway. He even has to sing a throbbing ''Aida''-style (that is, Elton John-style) duet with Ms. Menzel.
Despite the green skin, Elphaba is a bizarrely colorless role, all furrowed-brow sincerity and expansive power ballads. Ms. Menzel miraculously finds the commanding presence in the plainness of her part, and she opens up her voice in flashy ways that should be required study for all future contestants on ''American Idol.''
But even such committed intensity is no match for Ms. Chenoweth's variety. Though this petite, even-featured blonde would seem to have a set and familiar persona, it's amazing how she keeps metamorphosing before your eyes and ears.
Her voice shifting between operetta-ish trills and Broadway brass, her posture melting between prom-queen vampiness and martial arts moves, she evokes everyone from Jeanette MacDonald to Cameron Diaz, from Mary Martin to Madonna. And her precisely graded vocal and physical inflections turn even predictable one-liners into something so startling that you have to laugh.
Her vividness creates a balance problem, since ''Wicked'' is nominally Elphaba's story. Surely the show's creators didn't mean for audiences to root so ardently for a terminally superficial party girl, even before her political rehabilitation.
But, ah, when you have an actress who can so skillfully sell and send up her character, turning social vices into show-stopping virtues, how can you resist? What Ms. Chenoweth manages to do with the lyrics of a song of self-admiration called ''Popular'' is a master class in musical phrasing.
I was so blissed out whenever Glinda was onstage that I never felt I was wasting time at ''Wicked.'' I just kept smiling in anticipation of her return when she wasn't around.
The talented Ms. Menzel will no doubt dazzle audience members whose musical tastes run to soft-rock stations. But for aficionados of the American musical, it's Ms. Chenoweth who's the real thing, melding decades of performing traditions into something shiny and new. ''Wicked'' does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the Broadway musical. Ms. Chenoweth, on the other hand, definitely does.
WICKED
Music by Stephen Schwartz; book by Winnie Holzman, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire. Directed by Joe Mantello; musical staging by Wayne Cilento; orchestrations by William David Brohn; music director, Stephen Oremus. Sets by Eugene Lee; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by Kenneth Posner; sound by Tony Meola; projections, Elaine J. McCarthy; wigs and hair by Tom Watson; production supervisor, Steven Beckler; technical supervisor, Jake Bell; music arrangements, Alex Lacamoire and Mr. Oremus; dance arrangements, James Lynn Abbott; music coordinator, Michael Keller; associate set designer, Edward Pierce; special effects, Chic Silber; flying sequences, Paul Rubin/ZFX Inc.; assistant director, Lisa Leguillou; marketing TMG, the Marketing Group; general managmeent, EGS; executive producers, Marcia Goldberg and Nina Essman. Presented by Marc Platt, Universal Pictures, the Araca Group, Jon B. Platt and David Stone. At the Gershwin Theater, 222 West 51st Street, Manhattan.
WITH: Kristin Chenoweth (Glinda), Idina Menzel (Elphaba), Michelle Federer (Nessarose), Christopher Fitzgerald (Boq), Carole Shelley (Madame Morrible), William Youmans (Doctor Dillamond), Norbert Leo Butz (Fiyero) and Joel Grey (the Wonderful Wizard of Oz).
Published: 10 - 31 - 2003 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 3 , Page 1