Wicked

I saw Wicked the musical for my birthday. For years, my friends have raved about this musical. I’ve heard “Defying Gravity” many, many times, heard of how great the music was and been warned of the twist at the end, alluded to slyly but always kept a secret for me; so I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.

It was incredible. Just incredible. Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, was a powerful singer who blew me away. She stood out from all the rest with her incredible voice- almost better than Idina Menzel, the originator of the role (saying that is practically Broadway heresay!). The story itself was equally as good. It’s so cool to look at a favorite childhood story from a completely different angle, and to actually like the scary green witch from my worst childhood nightmares. Wicked tells of Elphaba’s whole life, from being born green in Munchkinland, to her days at Shiz Academy, where she rooms with Glinda (then Galinda) the Good Witch, to her eventual spiral into becoming the Wicked Witch of the West. I was completely fascinated by the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda, and I loved how cleverly everything was explained from the original Wizard of Oz, how favorite characters were woven into the story. I emerged from the theatre glowing with excitement, promptly borrowed the soundtrack from my friend, and stowed the book in my bag for beach reading: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire.

I was expecting similar magical storytelling, interaction of the characters, and an even better and in depth look into Glinda and Elphaba's unlikely friendship. I wanted more behind-the-scenes secrets of the land of Oz. Instead, I got copious political commentary, ungraceful storytelling, and jaded characters, none of whom were likeable. The plot of Maguire's book barely resembles that of the musical, and to be honest, the musical plot is much easier to follow, relates more to The Wizard of Oz, and is more absolute. It was frustrating to know that there was such a wonderful potential for a story that was utterly ruined by the author's overriding political agenda and crude writing.

Wicked begins with an unnecessarily long section characterizing Elphaba's mother as a selfish, shallow girl and her father as a self-righteous and prejudiced missionary to the Munchkinlanders. Elphaba's birth seems a side-note to the vigorous ridicule of her father's religious beliefs and narrow-mindedness. After this painful section ends, we find Elphaba at Shiz Academy, meeting Galinda, who is shallow and preoccupied with her social status. Through a series of muddled events, Elphaba becomes involved in an experiment with her goat-teacher, Doctor Dillamond, that is never fully explained and yet referred to throughout the novel, while Galinda continues with her socialite lifestyle. Boq, a young Munchkinlander, falls in love with Galinda and enlists Elphaba's help in getting to know her, which eventually leads to Galinda and Elphaba's "friendship," though it never appears genuine. It is around this time that Nessarose, Elphaba's disabled younger sister, attends Shiz as well. Nessarose, like her father, is equally ridiculed as clinging blindly to her faith in a negative way. She's cranky and self-righteous. The adventures of Elphaba, Galinda, Boq, Fiyero (a handsome boy from the Vinkus lands), Nessarose, and others are documented, again at great length and without any seeming point except, at times, to be crude. Through even more complicated events, Elphaba meets the Wizard and then goes into reclusion for twenty years, supposedly involved in secret resistance.

Thus far, the musical and book match up enough, though the play thankfully simplifies things (for example, Elphaba's parents have only a couple measures in the opening). But after this, Elphaba has an affair with Fiyero, who suddenly crops up, and he is killed through her resistance work. She embarks on a long journey to visit Fiyero's family in the Vinkus, now with a child in tow. There she stays (mostly) until her death. Again, there are hundreds of pages wasted on uninteresting background, plots that seem to go nowhere, and that don't relate to the Wizard of Oz at all. At this point I was skimming through, wanting to get to the end. Which, thankfully, was what I had been looking for in the book: a neat tie-in to the original story, involving Dorothy and Toto. But certainly, slogging through the whole book was NOT worth that little tiny bit at the end.

The book was hindered by the author's political ideals, and relentless ridiculing of the Christian religion, thinly veiled as a different religion in the book. When a child's story so beloved as this one is simply used as the wheels for an author's opinions on the real world today, he is better off in journalism. Let us have our fairy-tales unsullied by an obnoxious narrator.