Words by JANE CROWTHER
That Stephen Schwartz’s hit musical adapted for the big screen would please Ozians was never in doubt. Debuting on Broadway in 2003, Wicked was a musical touchstone for audiences embracing the outlier characters as well as themes of female friendship and being your best bad self. Adapted for cinema by screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, and directed by In The Heights helmer Jon M Chu, it’s a story steeped in film history and designed for cinematic scale – pushing the lurid world of Oz beyond the confines of a theatre stage. So big they split it in half, with part 2 coming next festive season, and a winter release date that lands it right in the middle of awards season like a beautiful pink bubble coming to rest in Munchkinland.
For non-Ozians then, the premise: a prequel to the 1939 interpretation of L Frank Baum’s book, Wicked charts the key moments that turned two schoolgirls from frenemies to besties and onward to battling witches of the North and West. An origin story, it asks the question whether anyone is born bad or merely formed by circumstance or shaped by myth and media. Opening with the death of the Wicked Witch Of The West (a puddle and that recognisable hat), sugary pink Glinda (Ariana Grande) tells the munchkins that they are now safe and also the story of their friendship. As students at Shiz academy presided over by sorceress Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), spoilt, disingenuous Glinda is roomed with green newcomer Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a hurt outcast who is rejected by her father and harbours a telekinesis power that is unleashed by rage and sense of injustice. Both girls fall for vapid Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) and both journey to Emerald City to meet the wizard (Jeff Goldblum). Both will have very different outcomes…
All of this is played out over nearly three hours and via numerous songs (two of the show’s bangers, Popular and Defying Gravity show up in Part One) and there is sumptuous production design, kinetic camera swirls, CGI cityscapes, technicolor hoofing and high-note hitting. All as expected from Grande and Erivo, two singers who certainly have pipes. But where Wicked succeeds in spellbinding an audience is not just in the comic hair-tossing of Glinda, the appearance of two OG original Broadway cast members,Goldblum’s jazzy line delivery, the majestic swirl of black cape as Erivo unleashes her full potential while riding a broom… but in the emotional punch it manages to pack.
The connection between Glinda and Elphaba feels true as essayed by Grande and Erivo, a sub-plot about the treatment of animals is distressing (possibly too much for young children), the parallels with modern polarising politics are uncomfortable (‘where I come from everyone knows the best way to bring folks together is to give them a really good enemy’ says Goldblum’s dodgy wizard). But the real gut-punch is Erivo – a moment when she wordlessly displays all her emotions at a bullying school dance is tear-inducing and the adrenal spike is sure when she belts out the bars of Defying Gravity from the boiling heavens surrounding Emerald City. At the European premiere in London, her end credit exit prompted a tearful standing ovation and it’s likely it will do the same in cinemas everywhere else. Cynthia Erivo may have departed from Oz, but she enters the awards conversation in a brilliant flash of light.
Though unlikely to convert musical haters, Wicked is the sort of four-quadrant entertainment that most cinemagoers want at this time of year. Pink does go good with green.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Wicked is in cinemas now
