Review: Wicked

After Time Out broke the news in August that Wicked was coming to Singapore, we were deluged with messages on Twitter and Facebook asking for more details. When is it being staged? (The show premiered on 6 Dec). Who’s producing it? (Base Entertainment Asia). Where’s the cast from? (Australia). We had no idea that the Tony-nominated musical – first staged on Broadway in 2003 – had so many local fans. After all, it features just four memorable songs, only one of which – ‘Defying Gravity’ – has achieved mainstream success. Nevertheless, tickets sold out during the first week of sales, prompting the organisers to extend the musical’s run for another month (until 26 Feb).  

• Purchase tickets to Wicked

What makes Wicked so appealing? The musical, adapted by Winnie Holzman from Gregory Maguire’s novel and featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, has many things going for it, including a Tony Award-winning set design and costumes that wouldn’t look out of place in a book by Dr Seuss. There are flying monkeys, a giant dragon and a blonde witch floating in a cloud of bubbles. But ultimately, it’s the story and the complexity of the characters that prove to be the winning ingredients.

‘Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?’ is the question posed as the musical opens. A local reviewer complained that the characters are ‘morally ambiguous’. They’re not. But they are complex. What’s most surprising about Wicked is its intelligence and ambition. It’s a powerful, buoyantly entertaining show that tends to resonate with teenage girls, in particular.

Wicked traces the relationship between green-skinned outcast Elphaba (Jemma Rix) and popular blonde Glinda (Suzie Mathers), both students at Oz’s elite Shiz University. Though the musical’s main hook is its exploration of the school-yard ostracism of the unconventional and unpretty, dig a little deeper and you’ll find that it’s actually concerned with more pernicious kinds of prejudice.  

• Meet Wicked's witches: Jemma Rix and Suzie Mathers
  

For the distaste for Elphaba’s skin colour, read racism; and it’s her protests against an oppressive regime that see her defamed as the Wicked Witch of the West. There’s also, in an Oz ruled by a despotic Wizard (played by lovable Aussie TV personality Bert Newton), an underclass of animals with high-level intelligence – forbidden, like dangerous dissidents, to use their power of human speech. Wicked’s Yellow Brick Road is meandering, yet it’s exhilarating to see hefty themes tackled in a barnstorming piece of popular entertainment. And the parallels to the far less rewarding original story of Dorothy and her friends are handled with sparkling wit. Yes, this is glossy and bombastic; but there’s more than a sprinkling of magic here, too.  

We caught Wicked on its second night, when Lucy Durack was filling in for Mathers, who was ill. Durack was the original Glinda in the Australian production and she was fun to watch as a bubbly, perky blonde who sounded a lot like spoiled socialite Karen Walker from Will & Grace. When Mathers offered a belated preview of her performance days later at a media conference that had been rescheduled from an earlier date, she sang ‘Popular’. Her tentative delivery was a bit disappointing.

Jemma Rix, who first tackled the role of Elphaba in 2006 when Wicked was staged in Japan and was part of both the Sydney and Melbourne productions, captures the character perfectly. Many in the Singapore audience seemed close to tears near the end of Act I, when her goofy character discovers her inner strength and sings ‘Defying Gravity’ while floating in mid-air. Many theatregoers coming to Wicked for the first time may think they’ll be passing a light-hearted couple of hours, but don’t let the bright lights and eye-catching costumes fool you. This is a complex and thought-provoking musical that we don't mind watching again.

Wicked plays till 22 Apr at Marina Bay Sands Grand Theater.