Hogwarts for Girls

To be honest I was a bit sniffy when I first heard the Wicked album. But the more I listened, the more I liked it. Finally caught the show last year in the West End and couldn't help but be impressed. Here's the review:

Wicked is a girly musical. It’s for girls and about girls. It has a devoted fan base, most of whom are girls. It’s about two girls, the Wicked and Good Witches from the Wizard of Oz, and re-imagines how they came to be. Elphaba is the freaky green one with magical powers and a vaulting ambition; Glinda is the popular blonde one with too many shoes. At first they hate each other; then they change their minds and become Best Friends Forever; then they fall out over a boy. Finally, they grow up, have a big heart to heart and agree never see each other again. Like I said - girly.

So naturally most of the creative team are men. The original novel is by Gregory Maguire (male) with songs by Stephen Schwartz (male) and the original director was Joe Mantello (male). Perhaps Winnie Holzman, as the token female, deserves more of a mention. Her book knits together a lot of plot but never loses sight of the girly relationship at its heart. This builds to a genuinely thrilling Act I finale, “Defying Gravity”. The setup, development and pacing are all beautifully handled to produce an appropriate climax. The composer can modulate like crazy and the singer can show off their high notes, but, in truth, it’s a book writer’s moment. For any musical song to really take off, it needs a good launching pad. Admittedly, in this case, some high-tension fly wire helps too.

Act II smartly keeps things moving by piggy-backing on the original story: the house landing in Munchkin High Street; the making of Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow; and a clever twist on the big witch-melting scene at the end. The familiarity creates its own momentum as inevitable events are explained or replayed from a different perspective. Occasionally the dialogue does misfire. In the big confrontation scene in Act II the estranged friends meet after Elphaba’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, has been flatted by Dorothy’s house. Glinda tries to prevent Elphaba from setting off in pursuit of the flattener who has also swiped her sister’s slippers:

“Oh, come on, they’re only slippers. Get over it.”

It gets a laugh but it’s too glib to ring true. Fortunately the next gag works better. The argument boils up and just as it looks as if the two witches about to have full-on magic-off, they chuck away their wand and broom and start pulling at each other’s hair. It’s funny not just because of the silly screeching and name-calling, but also because it feels true. Two childhood friends meet after years apart and all too easily slip back into childish behaviour. So we have one gag that is expedient and detracts from the drama; the other is illustrative and enlarges it. Musical books are tricky and, despite the odd duff joke, Winnie Holzman deserves plenty of credit and not just for being female.

On top of this Stephen Schwartz has written a remarkable score. Schwartz has always been more at ease with drum kits and electric guitars than most Broadway writers. But his sound, from 60s hippies (Godspell) to 90s bell-swingers (Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame), is still essentially musical theatre. And one of the best songs in Wicked is pure musical comedy, as Glinda chirpily explains to Elphaba how to be “Popular”:

"You’ll hang with the right cohorts
You’ll be good at sports
Know the slang you’ll need to know"

It’s full of fun and bounce, as well as exact and novel rhymes. Sometimes these run away with themselves (analysis/dialysis) but it doesn’t spoil the overall effect. What’s surprising is how far this kind of old-school songwriting is from the current pop charts. Yet it’s playing successfully to the same audience. It shows that musical theatre can hold its own.

Another surprise, given the target audience, is the sophistication of the score. There’s much more going on than soupy power ballads. There’s big choral writing in “No One Mourns the Wicked” with consecutive 5ths and juicy added 9ths on “Wick-ed!” to add a touch of unease. There’s thematic material and underscoring that recurs in various keys and guises. Or take the Act II opener, “Couldn’t Be Happier”. Glinda is trying to put a brave face on the fact that her fiancé’s not interested and her best friend has gone AWOL to become some kind of vegetarian terrorist. But the reassuring sentiment of the title is undermined by the shifting time signatures. The first section casually flips between bars of 5/8 and 2/4, followed by a few bars of 6/8, then rounds off with a 3/4 and 4/4. Then the mask drops a little:

“There’s a feeling that’s something’s...lost
There’s a kind of a sort of...cost”

Those musical pauses before “lost/cost” are precise: faltering, uncertain, confused. Forget the pop charts; this is terrific songwriting by any measure.

Less sophisticated, unfortunately, is the politics. Alarmingly the Wizard has become a metaphor for George Bush. Turns out he’s just another politician spinning the mob into a phoney war with a bunch of talking animals (the Iraqi Republican Guard, presumably). So in his big number, “Wonderful”, he takes to a spot of smug punditry:

"Is one a crusader
Or ruthless invader?
It’s all in which label is able to persist
There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities
So we act as though they don’t exist"

But family musicals really aren’t the arena to make smarty-pants statements about politics and historical revisionism. As for moral ambiguities Wicked isn’t quite the sophisticated fairy tale it thinks it is: “Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?”. Hmm. The next time I’m caught with one hand in the biscuit barrel, I’ll give that argument a go: “Stealing? Me? No! The chocolate Hob Nob was thrust upon me”.

All of which makes the show’s conclusion a little weaker than it should be, as Elphaba and Glinda sing their tearful farewells:

“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you, I have been changed for good”

It sounds like it should be some profound moral truth. In fact, it’s just word play.

Happily all the ponderous moralising doesn’t detract too much from the whole. The politics of Wicked may be fluff and nonsense. But there's still real depth in the girly stuff.