Book: Winnie Holzman
Music and Lyrics: Stephen Schwartz
Director: Joe Mantello
There’s no escaping the ubiquitous poster-splash campaign when Wicked comes to town: the spell-by-stealth eponymous, conspiratorial faces of co-protagonists, Glinda, the alabaster beautiful, and the Greened-upon one, Elphaba, are a worldwide phenomenon. More awards than could have a conductor’s baton shaken at and recently having celebrated its 20th Anniversary – let the stats do the talking.
With a plot so mystifyingly contrived as to set even Alan Partridge adrift in a Sargasso Sea of cliches it’s down to the unquestionable near genius of the scenic designs from talented- part Chaplin’s Modern Times and Queen’s Metropolis-inspired dystopian Radio Gaga video – to get jaws dropping from the off. There’s plenty more to come.
Pile-on a plethora of talented ensemble casting, hoofers and chorus lines having the time of their lives. Inevitably, Laura Pick’s Elphaba and Sarah O’Connor’s Glinda bask wickedly in the utterly deserved limelight (Kenneth Posner’s lighting design using some seriously inspired smoke and mirrors SciFi magic).
Now bring on Stephen Schwartz’s music and lyrics that remain ever in the musical pantheon of leather-lunged, life-affirming, overkill power ballads. Pick’s Elphaba closes Act 1 with the special effects broomstick spectacular Defying Gravity enough to make Jim Steinman and Meatloaf jealous, together with the kitsch and tell cutie charms of Glinda’s Popular, what’s not to like?
Eleven songs alone in Act 1 (twenty-one in total) barely leave time for breath – and that’s just the audience. Making up the worldwide Wicked attendance to over sixty million and counting, respect’s due tonight for the Hippo audience given the extended technical glitch delaying the curtain-raiser by nearly twenty minutes. Those pesky munchkins – perhaps the one seen sneaking out of the orchestra pit. Musical Director Matthew J. Loughran is having none of it: he’s put a band together with multi-bass parts from Aidan Platts riffing off the drums of Craig Hanson like they’re reprising Beverly Hills Cop and reinventing Cool.
O’Connor’s Glinda establishes a near-perfect study of air-head vacuous vanity and self-consumed narcissism, not quite what her feminist sisters have been fighting for but a delicious homage, at least, to Alicia Silverston’s character, Cher Horowitz, in Clueless. Add some serious slap-and-paste make-up overload and it’s Barbie Time personified. O’Connor’s svelte timing hears her drop in the occasional mispronunciation so nuanced it’s barely noticeable.
The St John Ambulance Team are discreetly on hand to assist the swooning droves on encountering the dashing buck, Fiyero (Carl Man). His preening demeanour is akin to the Colin Firth/Darcy fish-pond dive from the BBC’s Pride And Prejudice adaptation. Themes of what true friendship means, the ugly transition from bullied to bully, prejudice and vanity (THE MESSAGE!) are interwoven with set-pieces of such astonishing eye-candy addiction enough to make Willy Wonka green with envy. The Act 1 denouement witnesses the appearance of two Tweedledum/Tweedledee-like characters which should really have trigger alerts for audience members in their seventies plus to stay away from the ‘Brown Acid’. Yes, that frightening.
Defying gravity, for all Wicked virgins this show’s a headlong dive into a wishing-well spellbound spectacular splash of excess in all areas with bed knobs and broomsticks on. Like Sir Percy in Blackadder, base metal can metamorphose to priceless Green! Look out – Something Wicked this way comes.
Runs until 7 April 2024 and on tour
