Theatre
Review
Review: Wicked
This dark and magical fairytale more than deserves its eighteen years in the West End
Wicked was the first musical I begged my parents to take me to. I don’t know what it is about the Wizard Of Oz retelling that grabs and doesn’t let go. I wasn’t fanatical about the Judy Garland original – I don’t think I’d even seen it – and neither are most of the people that still pack out the Apollo Victoria every night. Wicked isn’t compelling as a sequel; it’s just compelling. Audiences don’t visit the Apollo Victoria to see a different side to these characters, but to meet them and know them fresh. More than The Wiz, more than even Gregory Maguire’s original novel (if that isn’t sacrilegious to say), Wicked the musical has come to define our understanding of Glinda the Good and The Wicked Witch of the West – and in the process, to define what makes musical theatre excellence.
Like many successful musicals throughout the decades, Wicked is a love story. Unlike many, it’s a platonic one. Wicked’s romantic subplot is exactly that, a sidebar to the focus of the piece, which is the relationship between two polar opposite best friends. Much like the drastically different but somewhat thematically similar new musical at the Garrick Why Am I So Single?, Wicked is concerned with the lasting impact of close friendships on our lives and characters – actually, Why Am I So Single? references this with a spoof on the famous ‘Defying Gravity’ riff. The fact that an entire audience in a different theatre seeing a different musical get a joke built on four notes from Wicked (and laugh every night) is testament to just how pervasive Wicked’s impact is – and for good reason.
The music in Wicked is excellent across the board – you can see what a hard time we had ranking every song from it. It balances light and dark wonderfully, capturing the whimsy of Oz whilst slowly unveiling the darkness that Wicked reveals. Famous numbers like ‘Defying Gravity’ and ‘Popular’ are famous for good reason, offering comic and dramatic moments of the highest caliber along with some of musical theatre’s most accomplished lyricism, but first time Wicked-goers are often surprised to discover how political the show also is. Wicked seeks not just to entertain, but to challenge. How do you rewrite a classic villain into a misunderstood hero? Should we ever accept a story without investigating its agenda?
Wicked recently celebrated its 18th birthday at the Apollo Victoria, and it’s unlikely to be going anywhere anytime soon. The musical is still a phenomenon, with audiences coming back for repeat viewings year on year and new fans falling in love with the show all the time. The upcoming adaptation with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Eviro is set to pull in a whole new crowd – and has fans around the world crossing their fingers that the film will live up to everything that the original stands for. Regardless, London’s love affair with Wicked isn’t ending, and nor should it. This is one West End staple that fully deserves to hang around for good.
