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WICKED ★★★★
(PG) 160 minutes
There is no disputing the popularity of the stage version of Wicked. It’s been a Broadway favourite for 20 years, and has become a durable international hit. But I’ve never quite understood why. It’s always seemed to me that its revisionist take on The Wizard of Oz and the life and character of Dorothy’s nemesis, the Wicked Witch of the West, provided a very shaky basis for a rollicking musical.
Cynthia Erivo brings gravitas to Elphaba.
In recasting the witch as a victim of prejudice and misunderstanding, the story often slips into didacticism. There is so much going on that it’s easy to lose the plot, which is wrapped rather loosely around the friendship between the so-called bad girl, Elphaba, who is stigmatised by the fact she’s been born with green skin, and the pink and pretty Glinda the Good, who’s adored by everybody.
Happily, the film version’s director, Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians), is quick to let us know he’s aware of all this. Working from a screenplay co-written by Winnie Holzman, one of the musical’s creators, he’s taken a successfully radical approach to the show, smoothing out the kinks in the narrative by spreading it across two films (part two will be with us in November next year).
He’s brightened up the scenery with a series of spectacularly expansive sets. The Yellow Brick Road is now surrounded by fields glowing with the bulbs of 9 million tulips. And Shiz University, where Elphaba and Glinda meet, is a mixture of Hogwarts and a Venetian palazzo with Arabian flourishes. The dance numbers are brilliantly arranged to make the most of its architecture, and you can better appreciate the wit of the song lyrics because of the potency of the close-ups.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Sydney for the film’s global premier earlier this month.Credit: Kate Geraghty
All up, everything makes more sense. The plot’s complexities have more time to play out and the switch in tone – from light-hearted coming-of-age story to serious political parable – loses its abruptness and the didacticism melts away.
And it’s perfectly cast. Cynthia Erivo gives Elphaba all the gravitas she needs without losing sight of her sense of humour, and Ariana Grande’s Glinda is a deadpan delight, genuinely baffled on the rare occasions when things don’t entirely go her way. She and John Bailey’s playboy prince, Fiyero, seem made for one another until he falls under Elphaba’s influence and inconveniently develops a taste for thinking.