Wicked, Part 1

Or: It’s Not Easy, Being Green

Oh oh oh, how I do love a big movie musical. Get me a sumptuous score and a hundred odd people doing complex choreography as they go about their workaday lives and I’ll be happy as a pig amid truffles. A soundtrack can cover up a multitude of cinematic sins, and can feel like awakening from a fairy curse to step out into the theater, tapping ones toes, and then ask oneself ‘…but what were those cats really doing?’ Wicked does not have this problem.

Based on the novel by Gregory Maguire that turned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz inside out and purged it of its technicolor allegory (which, admittedly, I could never follow anyway. All I know is that the Lion is Jesus) and gave us the story of two gals being pals. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) afflicted from childhood with green skin and phenomenal power and despised for both (even by her sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) crosses paths with the glamorous rich girl Galinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) at Shiz, the Land of Oz’s premier university. Tossed together into loathing, that becomes understanding that becomes two intertwined but very different destinies. One is groomed by Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) the Dean of Sorcery to become a good witch and protege of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). The other is blonde.

Their collision sends sparks flying in Jon M. Chu’s delectable vision of Oz, full of the finest fashions and gorgeous vistas (and studious cameos). Far from just a fine soundstage the lanes of Munchkinland and the sights of the Emerald City are real and enticing enough to make one wish you could vanish into their crowds for one (short) day. I dare you, dear reader, not to grin and click your heels in the kaleidoscopic stacks of the university library, perfect for a devil may care dance number.

While very long (as is the trend of late) there’s not a moment of the movie that could be cut, nor one that does not both delight the senses and further the story. Erivo leads us through it with her tender heart and high hopes: a proper heroine heart meltingly sad, and funny, and steely by points. It’s no wonder she captures the heart of the dashing Prince Fiyero (Johnathan Bailey) who has the dashing twinkle toned love interest bit down to the tea (and appeals to all sorts.) Though it is a further testament to the heart of the movie that the most compelling connection belongs to a goat, Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage), a professor of history, and conspiracy theorists that all is not well in the merry old land. It is a triple testament to Dinklage’s prowess, Ervio’s charisma, and Chu’s animation crew who makes the good Doctor so alive and expressive (Disney, take note.)

As for Grande-Butera, I’ll admit I was skeptical when the internationally renowned pop-star was cast (not because I doubted her abilities but because it seemed … easy, on behalf of the movie movers and cinema shakers). However I must eat my hat because the hair tossing, high-singing, sort of awful, sort of wonderful Galinda of Grande-Butera’s portrayal is fabulous. One of the movie (and the musicals) finest moments, “Popular,” has Galinda leads her once foe on a makeover montage. Here it is a thrilling show of theatrical invention (transforming luggage! Mirrors that become stages!), but it could be in a bare and cobwebbed croft and still Grande-Butera’s expert cavorting would carry the moment. It was like Chenoweth come again.

But no movie perfect, and I have two complaints to put forward. One: the cast sings too beautifully. This is really only a problem in the beginning (‘No One Mourns the Wicked”) but the high, operatic flare of Grande-Butera, Ervino, Bailey and the rest is gorgeous but it’s hard to follow the lyrical loop-dee-loops that I know it contains. This might go back to the source of

of Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz works, (big on the razzle, big on the dazzle, big on the high class schmaltz), but it also could just be that I am getting older and lack the audio-dexterity (Dear reader if you are ever in a move theater and you here a crochet old man whistle -shout “Schhpeak up!” up at the screen, sounding like Michael Gough as Gopher in the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: that’s me, hi, I’m the gopher, it’s me.)

The other thing that took me a minute to warm up to was the choreography. Dancing in Oz is weird, and more often that not kind of martial, behind its whimsicality. Of course Oz is not like any place on earth; they are particular in in their expressions and very bad at civics (though that actually reminds of several other countries, actually), so why shouldn’t their dancing have a flavor all its own. It just rankles when Elphaba, cruelly invited to a dance hall and mocked by the assembled, stands her ground and performs a dance of her own invention. It’s a heart in your throat type of moment, but there was a small part of me thinking that this was no more inventive and wild that what we’ve seen in most conservative Munchkinland.

Still, enough gripping. Wicked fully takes flight and fills the movie theater, the kind of show you need a big screen to get the most out of, singing high-schoolers be damned. And while it’s a fabulous movie it also fulfills the promise of its theatrical roots, marrying magic and wonder, with ever present fears of belonging, and how quickly anyone can be made an enemy, or a darling, of the people. A timeless tale about following your heart and overthrowing the government.

But let us relish this good time while we can. For noble Elphaba is not long for this world. The winds are stirring and doom rises from the plains of Kansas. Not everybody, least of all the good, are going to make it out alive.