Teenage girly, musicals, three hours long. All no-nos for me in choosing a film to watch. So why I watched Wicked is a mystery. But I’m glad I did, it is very entertaining. It’s a prequel to the Wizard of Oz and contains much that is familiar from the land of Oz, such as talking animals - Peter Dinklage speaks for the history teacher goat. This is not incidental - a rebellion occurs in support of the animals after the school decides to terminate their services.
I've never understood why the Wizard is central to the title of the book and the earlier movie. He's just a fake with no magic powers; it's the witches which are the central characters - the good one and the wicked one.
The show begins with a spoiler - Galinda (Ariana Grande) announces to the audience that "the Wicked Witch of the West is dead". Here's where I have to confess to a large degree of ignorance about female pop singers. If you played me a song by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Rihanna or even Madonna I wouldn't know which is which. In my ignorance I dismiss them as under-dressed popular artists pandering to a teenage girl audience making appealing but limited music [Ed: patronising old git].
But I stand corrected. Ariana Grande can actually sing. Startlingly well, with a huge vocal range. A little bit lacking in oomph but then I'm comparing her to operatic sopranos that I'm more familiar with and who probably possess larger lung capacities. After listening to her I read some stuff about her and learn she has a vocal range of at least four octaves and she can use the whistle register (the highest soprano frequencies). She is joined by co-star Cynthia Erivo. I'm aware of her from a weird and scary Stephen King adaptation The Outsider, where she plays a savant-like private detective and steals the show. I didn't know she was a singer but this is my loss because she has won an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony award as well as having an Oscar nomination.
These two make the central focus of the film. Initially from wildly different backgrounds - Erivo as Elphaba, the sister of wheelchair-bound Nessarose who is due to enrol in Shiz University and the Dean of Sorcery Studies sees an accidental magic trick by Elphaba and enrols her too. Elphaba has green skin and now that she needs a room she is paired with bubbly blonde Galinda (who becomes Glinda for no apparent reason). Popular Glinda grates on reclusive Elphaba but, in true romcom tradition, they eventually become best buddies, even though they both rather fancy connecting with the same classic all-American boy. Elphaba is enraged by the sacking of the animals who teach in the university and decides she needs to go see the Wizard in the hope that he will change the situation. She and Glinda board a spectacular life sized train and go to Oz. The Wizard proves to be useless and Elphie flies off into the distance on a broomstick leaving Glinda pretty baffled by what's going on.
I tried to get the essential points, as I understand them, in that synopsis. Much that is enjoyable revolves around the outstanding visual production and the strength of the musical and dance numbers; the storyline is pretty incidental.
This is where the film ends, but obviously not the story.
The only real issue for me is it’s a stretch at nearly 3 hours, despite being only the first half of the movie adaptation of the stage musical (I watched it over two evenings). The second half - Wicked: For Good (I'm so glad they didn't lazily go for Wicked 2) - comes to the cinema in November. I'll be there, queuing with the teenage girls.