Wicked

Eventually, I’ll get around to retroactively blogging as a whole about my trip to Singapore over winter break. For now though, I’m listening to the Wicked soundtrack for the umpteenth time and remembering the amazingness that was getting to watch Wicked live at the Marina Bay Sands on Christmas Day. I had eased into the musical over the course of a year, latching on to a few of the songs before I even knew the story or considered reading the novel. (“I’m Not that Girl” just happens to be cathartic fodder for love life troubles). At this point, though, I knew the plot, read the novel… and wanted badly to see it live, even trying to get discount tickets while in London. 

Seeing it live was chill-inducingly amazing, and such a step up from watching grainy clips of “Defying Gravity” on youtube. To be fair, I’d grown so used to hearing Idina Menzel and Kirsten Chenoweth sing the songs that hearing different actresses for Elphie and Glinda sounded strange, at first. Not that I had any particular complaint with either of their performances; quite the opposite, in fact. Elphaba was wonderfully passionate without sounding brassy, while Glinda struck a nice balance between being perky, self-absorbed, yet sympathetic. The Wizard successfully brought out a softer side to the ambitious-evil-character persona, and Fiyero was simply… well, heart-meltingly charming and romantic :) I’d never liked “Dancing Through Life” much before as a song but seeing this particular Fiyero perform it live definitely changed my mind on that matter. In that vein, “As Long as You’re Mine” easily became hands-down my favorite musical numbers, surpassing even “Defying Gravity.”

In a conversation following the musical, I noted how effortlessly “Wicked” manages to appeal to different age groups. I noticed that a good deal of the audience were kids; they seemed perfectly content enjoying the colorful costumes, large dance numbers, and gorgeous stage sets and effects. (The Time Dragon Clock, by the way, hung above the curtain and covered the entire length of the stage). On a personal level, I recalled how “Wicked” more or less resonated with my high school self on a relationship/interpersonal level. I would have resonated with the struggles of maintaining a friendship through clashes of morals, ambitions, and romantic interests. I would have identified with Elphaba, and Glinda, respectively, as being the third wheel of a love triangle. I used to despise Glinda as the popular girl. This time around, I experienced the musical mostly strongly as a political and social satire/commentary. For instance, “Popular” can be seen as a mocking tribute to the bubbly popular girl stereotype of high school and the all-importance of the social hierarchy in a school setting that movies such as “Mean Girls” love to lampoon on. Alternatively, it presents quite a cautionary tale regarding the nature of politics; “political figures are in power because they know how to generate large amounts of support, not necessarily because they possess intelligence, expertise or aptitude in their field.” This cautionary tale seems highly, highly applicable to the area of US politics in general :)

I’m so stubbornly convinced that “Wicked” isn’t about accepting differences. At least, it isn’t even near solely about accepting the odd one out. At the turning point, Elphie’s physical differences are accepted…she finds a place in the school social circle, friends, and a powerful job offer. What struck me was how on some level, every character struggles between balancing and often having to make agonizing choices between the desires for affection, ambition, and morality, each to varying degrees. Strikingly, the one character exempt from this struggle happens to be the press secretary, who is arguably the evilest character in the entire musical. This certainly raises issues of the nature/critical role and thus responsibility in regards to the press and the public, and the potential for media manipulation to occur in any society. In somewhat of a post-modernist tradition, poetic justice isn’t served, and Elphie is exiled while Glinda, who spends the length of the musical placing ambition above morality and affection, waltzes into position where she can have all three without conflict. In reexamining, I wonder if “Wicked” wasn’t questioning the utility of outright rebellion in reforming a corrupt structure. One of the saddest and simultaneously most frustrating aspects of the musical remains that Elphie could quite possibly have done more cooperating with the Wizard and working from within rather than staging an open rebellion. Thus, the question remains whether one is morally obligated to openly defy a corrupt system, and what political obligations are in place in such a system.