Getting Witchy at Wicked

The last time I went to see a live musical in a fancy theater was My Little Pony Live! at the Schnitz, so it’s kind of a big step up for me to move from that on to Wicked, the traveling musical currently residing at the Keller, based on Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel, by Gregory Maguire. Maguire’s book is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz specifically from the villain’s point of view, while the live show (as a piggybacking thrice-removed, when you recall the Judy Garland film was also based on a novel) shifts the focus to the relationship between the wicked witch (her name is Elphaba here) and Glinda, the good witch, essentially turning it into the theatrical equivalent of a coming-of-age chick flick, but with winged monkeys and talking goats. The trailer here shows a different cast from the one showing in town, but it’ll give you the general idea:

Hit the jump for my thoughts on the performance.

It seems worth pointing out that the original Broadway production of Wicked was not all that well received by critics, but it has nonetheless been met with largely gleeful delight by the masses. The crowd on Thursday was not as kid-filled as I anticipated, dominated instead by middle aged women. It also clocked in at about 2.5 hours, which is asking a lot of kids to sit through. The circumstances made me wish that the humor and subject matter had been a little darker, because I think they could have gotten away with it. As it stood it was cluttered with obvious and safe jokes playing off the audience’s familiarity with the original story. The brightest spot by far in the laughs department was the delivery and physical comedy of Galinda/Glinda (she changes her name at one point, in a particularly purposeless-all-around plot development), played by Katie Rose Clark, who is strikingly reminiscent of Amy Poehler.

Outside of Clark’s show-stealing antics as the chronically bubbly/positive/pretty/popular/patrician good “witch” (in this version, her powers are purely political), the show is at its best at its most dramatic, when the singing soars and they break out the hydraulics and fog machines—if the first act is difficult to get into, it is saved by the climaxes of the second.

The meat of the story is that Elphaba was never wicked, just born with green skin, and therefor taunted and persecuted throughout adolescence. At boarding school she and Galinda are roommates—at first unhappily so, but quickly they become friends. According to this version, Elphaba’s troubles with society actually stemmed from her work as an animal rights advocate (really!), and she was essentially the victim of a smear campaign. Over the years the girls’ friendship is tested in different ways—they even compete for the same guy, which we all know is the ultimate trial of female friendship (that would be sarcasm, folks), and everything we thought we knew about the tin man, the lion, and the straw man is flipped on its head in a series of neat if un-profound storytelling tricks.

Visually, the costume designers did not hold back on their exuberance when it came to stripes and—appropriately enough—the spectrum of shades of green. It wasn’t great so much as excitable, but there was never a moment when you felt you had seen everything going on onstage. In sum, it was a fun show with no sign of genius, and if Clark gets sick or breaks something, her poor understudy had better be studied up on Blades of Glory.

Wicked runs through April 5 at the Keller, tickets start at $51.