Wicked 2.5 stars
It's amazing what hype can do.
Call it mass hypnosis. Call it mass hysteria. The night I saw Wicked at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, the audience was clearly in the hands of some Svengali. Kendra Kassebaum as Glinda wiggled her nose and they roared. Carole Shelley as Madame Morrible made a joke that on television wouldn't set off the laugh track, and they roared. At the final curtain call, they roared, came to their feet, adored the cast as if it had just signed the documents guaranteeing world peace for the next century.
Grateful? This wasn't gratitude, it was surrender, capitulation. Do with us as you will. You'd think a community starved for art had been visited by Olivier and Caruso and Rembrandt and Stravinsky. You'd think prisoners from some dungeon had been let out for air, and Wicked was their first experience of freedom. You'd think that this juggernaut was bigger than West Side Story, Phantom and Les Miz combined.
It's not. Sorry to inform you.
Yes, I know it's the top-grossing show currently on Broadway, and that critics have fallen all over each other in shrieking its praises. But here's what I found: a shallow, meaningless script, eminently forgettable songs, and characters that — with the notable exception of the misunderstood Elphaba — you can't really come to care about.
On the plus side, the show has gorgeous sets, props and costumes, hugely talented actor/singers, and some ingratiating choreography. But Cecil B. DeMille and Maria Callas and Martha Graham couldn't make this thing matter. It's hollow and so mindless; the intellect begs for crumbs to munch on. When, in its last moments, the action overlaps with famous scenes from The Wizard of Oz, one welcomes this complexity as if it were a lecture by Stephen Hawking. Finally, something to think about. Another few minutes and we'd have been comatose.
The plot is the real culprit. As you've probably heard, Wicked purports to tell us the story of how Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked first came to Oz with their respective attitudes.
Elphaba, the spawn of an adulterous relationship, is born with green skin. As the only one of her hue in town, she becomes an outcast, a pariah. Soon, she meets the sorceress Madame Morrible and the prim, prissy little egotist, blonde-brained Galinda, aka Glinda. She also encounters the animal Dr. Dillamond, the "token goat" in a world where beasts are increasingly being persecuted.
Glinda becomes Elphaba's roommate, and resolves to make the self-doubting greenie much more popular. Meanwhile, animals in Oz are being treated worse than ever. There are love interests: the handsome Fiyero, who seems destined for Glinda, and the less-impressive munchkin Boq, who also prefers blondes.
The plot tells us next to nothing and spends almost three hours doing so. One wonders how the author — Winnie Holzman, basing her text on Gregory Maguire's book — could touch on such pregnant subjects as skin color, animal rights, self-hatred and the feminine psyche without seeming to have anything to say about any of them.
But if the script is a loser, the actor/singers who perform it and the sets and costumes that decorate it are, heaven be thanked, winners. Among the performers, Stephanie J. Block as Elphaba and Kendra Kassebaum as Glinda are most notable for their singing (because the script requires them to strike the same attitudes for so long, one loses interest in their acting), and Carole Shelley as Madame Morrible instantly communicates a stylish depravity.
Fine too is David Garrison as the Wizard — his relaxed approach to the part and to singing it is a great relief on a busy evening — and Sebastian Arcelus as Fiyero and Timothy Britten Parker as Dr. Dillamond are all first-rate performers.
Then there are Eugene Lee's sets: massive constructions suggesting the Emerald City or the home of the Great Oz, and props like the giant metal head behind which the Wizard operates, and which we get to see also from his standpoint.
Susan Hilferty's costumes are wonderfully inventive — I especially liked the getups of the flying monkeys — and if Stephen Schwartz's melodies are mostly throwaways, there are a couple in Act Two that you might find yourself whistling later.
The show leaves you with some questions: For example, why does Elphaba eventually put on that ugly hat and that black dress? How come the munchkins look so big? Why are the Dorothy scenes not expanded? But after nearly three hours, one is just happy to be leaving, and I really don't mind if the mysteries remain mysteries. And I'm not worried that the show might sour me on the real Wizard: one look at the young Judy Garland's face has more truth, poignancy and significance than all the lines of Wicked strung end to end.
And you know, maybe that's the reason that Wicked's so disappointing. In its straightforward way, The Wizard of Oz is about innocence going — reluctantly — to war against evil, about the heroine's quest ending in self-discovery, about the centrality of home.
Wicked's not about anything nearly as deep; and its allusions to racial bigotry and its weird — insincere? — defense of animal rights seem knee-jerk and opportunistic. In some fundamental way, I still don't know what the play's about.
Hey, I'd heard the hype too. I walked into the theater expecting a show as impressive as The Lion King, Evita, at the very least Miss Saigon.
What I got had no more heart than the Tin Man.
And no more brain than a weak and flimsy Scarecrow.
This article appears in Jan 25-31, 2006.