Talk about magic: "Wicked" manages to have it both ways at once, several times over. It attracts us with the beloved story of Oz, but it turns it upside down, revealing it to be a whitewash. This revisionism is full of allusive pleasures for the thinking adult, but it's also become a favorite of young girls. And although the major story line is tragic with horrifying side plots, there's giddy humor in the telling.
In all this it's very like the great mid-European fairy tales, which always had a grim (not to say Grimm) subtext, teaching through horror as much as reassurance. And yet "Wicked" is a popular musical melodrama, so cannily have librettist Winnie Holzman and composer Stephen Schwartz harvested the dark imaginings of novelist Gregory Maguire.
The key is that while Maguire makes a tormented, idealistic hero out of the demonized Witch of the West, wittily named Elphaba after Oz's creator, L. Frank Baum, the musical gives her an equal foil in Glinda the Good, who it turns out isn't "good" at all, except in the sense of bitchily manipulative.
- Where: PNC Broadway at Benedum Center, Downtown.
- When: Through Oct.5; Tues-Thurs. 7:30 p.m., Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 2 and 8 p.m., Sun 1 and 6:30 p.m.
- Tickets: $29.50-$84.50; VIP $127.50.
- More information: Box Office at Theater Square, 655 Penn Ave.; www.pgharts.org; 412-456-4800; limited lottery each day.
I assume that's what the young girls respond to -- the story of the dark idealist and the blond egotist, teenagers bound up in a sort of competitive friendship and also in love with the same boy.
So this is the back story to Oz, before the accidental but fated arrival of Dorothy, who appears here just as a shadow on a curtain, an accidental tool of fascism, co-opted to stage a mysterious death. Knowing the accepted story, we have the pleasure of catching brief allusions to it as this alternative version plays along in its shadow.
Along the way we meet those three famous fellow-travelers. The Cowardly Lion's is a sad enough story, but those of the Tin Man and Scarecrow are either gruesome or terrifying.
The national tour now set up at the Benedum for four more weeks has all the bells and whistles of its previous brief visit and most of those of the Broadway version, as well. Director Joe Mantello, choreographer Wayne Cilento and designers Eugene Lee, Susan Hilferty and Kenneth Posner provide elaborate, grotesque staging. I especially like the mid-European, Kafka-esque atmosphere, lit by clever details.
As I've said before, I think Schwartz's score is best in the comic numbers. Those generating foreboding or dread feel more generic and contribute unnecessary bloat to a show that is too long at more than 2 3/4 hours.
The comic numbers tend to be those that feature Katie Rose Clarke's Glinda. It may be Elphaba's show emotionally, but it's Clarke's in this production, from her first hair flip and "it's good to see me" to her last, calculated "Evita"-like performance for the crowd. She mines the bubblicious airhead for all her humor, but you also see what drives her, and she ends up the more plaintive figure. Carmen Cusack's Elphaba has a fine voice and the satisfactions of oppressed heroism, but Clarke's Glinda is the one with a broken heart.
Lee Wilkof is properly cute and devious as that manipulative Wizard, and Clifton Hall makes a nice transition from egotist to rebel as Fiyero. Myra Lucretia Taylor's Madame Morrible has the presence but not the extra degree of malice that Carole Shelly gave her on Broadway and the first visit here.
One "Wicked" fan tells me that some sexual innuendo has been excised for the tour. Whether or not that's true (I can't cite specific examples), there is still the length and a tragic grimness that argues against bringing children younger than nine or 10.
First Published: September 8, 2008, 8:00 a.m.