Timing makes Wicked a perfect
IT’S obvious Stephen Schwartz would never have created Wicked without The Wizard of Oz. The influence of British playwright Tom Stoppard may not be quite so apparent on the veteran American composer’s smash hit musical prequel to L Frank Baum’s classic tale of life made immortal by the 1939 film, but it’s there alright.
“Ever since I saw a production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, I’ve loved that idea of taking a familiar story with well-known characters and looking at it from a different point of view,” says Schwartz on the eve of Wicked’s arrival in Edinburgh. “It’s a way of addressing philosophies and ideas in an interesting way, and seeing if it survives the transition. I’ve always been enamoured by that.”
The idea for Wicked the Musical was born after Schwartz picked up a copy of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, while on holiday. Maguire’s adult reimagining of the Oz stories focused on the early years of Elphaba, the misunderstood green-skinned girl who grows up to become the Wicked Witch of the West, and Galinda, who, as Glinda, takes on the mantle of the Good Witch.
“When I heard about the book, it appealed to my sensibility,” says Schwartz. “It’s a book that questions what is wicked and what is good, what is spin and what is the truth of what we’re told, and what is manufactured as propaganda. Timing is important in theatre, and theatrically and politically, it felt like the right time to do the show, and the times we live in now mean that’s even more the case.”
If Schwartz’s last assertion sounds prescient, his show’s currency was hiding in plain sight all along. By the time he approached Maguire about his idea for Wicked, Maguire had sold the rights of his book to Universal
Pictures. Schwartz persuaded Maguire to let him do a stage adaptation, also bringing Universal on board to produce it. Schwartz drafted in
Winnie Holzman, creator of 1990s teen high school TV drama, My So Called Life, to write the show’s script. The result, which appeared in 2003, threw Elphaba and Galinda together as college room-mates who come of age in Oz on seemingly opposite sides of the popularity stakes.
“It’s a story with two female protagonists, and which focuses on the friendship between these two women,” says Schwartz. “It’s about how much of a person’s integrity they are willing to compromise to fit in, and that’s something we all have to think about.”
Such off-kilter looks at familiar fictional universes aren’t new.
Assorted comic book franchises have looked increasingly at the growing pains of superheroes while troubled adolescents. Schwartz’s musical theatre career was founded on such imaginative leaps in 1971 with his debut musical, Godspell, which put a post-hippy pop spin on the Gospel of St Matthew. A 22-year-old Schwartz was hired to add songs to an original play by John-michael Tebelak, which had been performed by students of Carnegie Mellon University – Schwartz’s alma mater – in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the year before.
Schwartz’s songs were added following the play’s initial run at the experimental Café Lamama, and after it opened off-broadway, the new musical version of Godspell ran for more than 2,000 performances. A London production opened at the Roundhouse in 1971 with a cast that featured David Essex, Julie Covington, Jeremy Irons and Marti Webb.
“That was an unusual spin on the Gospel of St Matthew,” Schwartz says of Godspell. “That’s how far back my interest in looking at familiar characters in a unique way goes.”
Schwartz did something similar with Pippin, his 1974 fusion of medievalism and Motown, of which he directed an