I am a major Broadway buff, the sort who can and will tell you with great enthusiasm about shows from creatives spanning the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lin-Manuel Miranda, to the lyricist whose musical we shall discuss today: Steven Schwartz. Of all the many Broadway shows I adore, the one I have perhaps loved the dearest and longest is Wicked. And yet — or perhaps because of — my little obsession, I have a few qualms about the Wicked movie, whose first half is set to release this November.
For those new to the Broadway world, Wicked is the story before The Wizard of Oz. This is the story of Elphaba, who will become the “Wicked Witch of the West” and her school-girl friendship with Glinda – or Galinda or “Glinda the Good.” The musical follows their lives all the way up to Dorothy’s arrival in Oz, and also reveals the origins of other beloved characters. Though Wicked opened on Broadway in 2003, it is only becoming a movie 21 years later. Why now?
I can answer this question only by order of elimination. Wicked is certainly not hitting the big screen due to high demand, as shown by most recent movie musical releases (In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, and West Side Story) not defying gravity, and instead plummeting towards the ground at the box office. While some of these releases had confounding variables such as opening at the same time as bigger name movies, shortly after the pandemic, and showcasing underrepresented groups, in my opinion this did not lead to their failures despite most having high critical success — the true problem is that the average audience member does not like musicals. This leads to my second question: If Wicked is being made by demand from a niche group of people, why are they not the target audience? Arguably, the Wicked film is pointedly not targeted to Broadway fans, for two reasons: type of film and casting.
By type of film I mean that most Broadway fans do not want movies like Wicked — filmed on a typical set with animation and CGI added later. What Broadway fans want is simple: to watch a movie musical and feel like you are in the theater (with the best seats in the house). This change is thanks largely to Hamilton, which revolutionized (pun intended) the Broadway movie game with the 2020 movie that was simply a filmed version of the stage production. This was when I, and many others, realized that if the musical is good enough, there is no need for anything more than what is given onstage. The Hamilton movie is real, it captures the musical exactly as it was: original cast, original choreography, the actual stage. It is immortalizing a piece of theater history so that it still feels like theater, and this has started a trend. For example, Merrily We Roll Along is being filmed similarly, capturing the Tony Award winning beauty that is Jonathon Groff, Daniel Radcliff, and Lyndsey Mendez together on stage. Over 180 other musicals/plays have also been filmed on stage, most in recent years.
Wicked especially does not need anything more than what is already given — it is a visually stunning spectacle of a musical. To list a few examples, Wicked has a fire-breathing dragon, a cage wall covered in flying monkeys, a giant moving and speaking wizard’s head, and a bubble that lowers Galinda from the ceiling. Compared to musicals like Merrily, whose set is a single room (which works for Merrily specifically), Wicked has ample visual stimulation — there is no need for animation, CGI, or AI. However, Wicked is not aimed at satisfying Broadway fans.
The second reason I say this is because of the casting, which is made up of big Hollywood names who are starkly not big Broadway names. Only Cynthia Erivo can call herself first and foremost a Broadway star, as she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for the revival of The Color Purple which she starred in from 2015 to 2017 and in which she, shocker, actually sang. The casting of Erivo I fully support and look forward to seeing on my screen. On the other hand, Ariana Grande is only known as a pop music artist. Though Jonathan Bailey won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical for Company in 2019, the world knows him primarily from Bridgerton. Michelle Yeoh has never been on Broadway, and Jeff Goldblum has only been in a Broadway play (meaning no singing). Sure, Ethan Slater was in SpongeBob SquarePants the musical but I simply cannot bring myself to count this.
This cast serves a purpose: Grande is beloved by pop music fans, Bailey is a recently discovered heartthrob, and Yeoh and Goldblum are icons of the film industry. I love the idea of bringing in different audiences to see a musical. However, Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum have never sung professionally, and Grande is by no means a Broadway singer. If you really wanted to please the Broadway fans, who are, as aforementioned, the people most likely to actually see the film, the cast would be vastly different. While we would die for the original cast of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, Idina has said she couldn’t do the movie because of aging. Then again, if we cared about aging we would not have a 31 year old (Grande), 37 year old (Erivo), and 36 year old (Bailey) playing university students, so I don’t really see this point. However, if younger than Idina is the goal, Broadway fans would also have enjoyed the Wicked cast of the National Tour or the cast presently on Broadway. These stars do this show 8 times a week, were painstakingly chosen for their roles, and know it better than anyone.
I know this sounds like no good deed goes unpunished, people are making my favorite musical into a movie I can eventually watch any time I want and I’m harping on every detail, but there are still questions that need answering. How are they splitting the movie into two sections? In the playbill, Wicked has 21 songs, 11 in the first half and 10 in the second, with the intermission making this pretty even split after “Defying Gravity.” This makes sense usually, when people bought their tickets already and will return from the bathroom right to their seats. But for a movie where they want people to buy tickets and return to theaters again, cutting the show here does not leave fans wanting much more — no offense to the second half of Wicked. This split gives the first half most of the musical’s best-known songs: “Dancing Through Life,” “Popular,” “One Short Day,” and “Defying Gravity,” leaving only “For Good” as a notable song for the second half. If I was simply someone going to see a much-talked-about movie, I would leave the first half feeling I had seen all I needed. Somehow, they need to keep people coming back for more.
So what is the game plan? Is the plan that the first half is going to be so unbelievably fantastic that everyone will return no matter what, or is the plan that diehard Broadway fans will always see more (then maybe you should have thought about us earlier!). All this being said, I could deal with these decisions. I could get behind the type of movie, cast of non-Broadway names, and whichever split they choose. But there is something I cannot abide under any circumstance: changing the music. Much like a book lover hoping the screen adaptation will remain loyal to the original, I am completely terrified that the movie will decide to play around with or take their own spin on the music of Wicked. My opinion is simple: the songs cannot be made better. Wicked is objectively a masterpiece. There is a reason why Wicked is Broadway’s second highest-grossing musical ever and fourth longest running show, which has been performed over 8,000 times and been on two national tours. I already have my qualms about this movie succeeding in the box offices and satisfying the audiences, but this is my biggest fear. Please, Wicked, defy gravity and my expectations; seek good instead of just seeking attention.
Jenna Ledley is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].