Costumed young witches invade the CCP

Metro Manila is all agog with the coming of Wicked to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) January next year. A press conference had been called by Lunchbox Theatrical Productions’ James Cundall, producer of Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera last year. Suzie Mathers as Glinda and Jemma Rix as Elphaba from the Australian cast attended the presscon along with Cundall and musical director David Young who will be auditioning local musicians to join the play’s orchestra.      

Apart from this, however, we are interested in any news why Wicked, which we had watched at the West End Apollo Victoria earlier this year, is slowly becoming the cult musical for youth all over the world.

Gregory Maguire wrote his novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in London in 1990. “The story of Wicked,” states Maguire, “relies on some of the same conventions explored by American writer L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made even more famous by the 1939 MGM film, The Wizard of Oz.”

The original fairy tale for children tells of a lonely and sad Kansas farm girl Dorothy who dreams of a better place “somewhere over the rainbow.” A fierce tornado strikes her on the head, transporting her to the Land of Oz where she meets magical characters like Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the East. Eventually, Dorothy tires of the adventures on Oz and yearns for the comforts of home in Kansas.

Martin Green, English professor at Tufts University outside Boston, often cites Robinson Crusoe as an eminent “foundation myth” on the character of both American and English societies to survive in a world of challenges with dignity. Robinson Crusoe delves into the cleverness of the human psyche. The Wizard of Oz serves a similar function on the American psyche. Both Crusoe from the book and Dorothy from the movie are washed ashore on foreign soil. By dint of pluck and luck, and buoyed up by a natural inclination toward open-mindedness and good-heartedness, both castaways survive their ordeals.   

The musical based on Maguire’s 1995 novel first opened on Broadway in 2003. In it, he invents the origins of the Wicked Witch of the West. One of the reasons for its success is “this untold-story angle, which seemed to completely engage the public,” says Michael McCabe, executive producer of the British production. “There is massive affection for The Wizard of Oz, but the notion that everything you’ve heard is not true, fired imaginations.”

In Maguire’s revisionist take, Elphaba the Wicked Witch of West began life as a good, spirited green-skinned girl who suffered appalling prejudice and became a dissident of the Oz regime. But the friendship between Elphaba and the spoiled shallow Glinda, who later becomes the Good Witch is what wins over in the end.

The spectacular rise of Wicked, nevertheless, would not have happened without the parallel rise of social networking. “This extraordinary community has grown up around the show and they have been the drivers of its success,” confesses McCabe. “Fans today can spread the word in seconds. There are more than 600,000 members of the Broadway production’s Facebook page. These fans regularly talk about the show on forums and Twitter, run sites devoted to the cast members, trade illicitly recorded video clips. These Wicked fans who have seen the show hundreds of times are responsible for the box-office in London slowly reaching the four millionth mark.”

Wicked has elements that couldn’t be more perfect for what bugs many teenage girls today. There are feelings of insecurity, of being an outsider, crushes, mean teachers, make-overs — everything they seemed to find in Wicked.

A new development linking the musical to production creativity is the Wicked Young Writers’ Award established two years ago. It is a competition that would inspire young people to use their writing to look at life a little differently. The award recognizes excellence in writing and creativity to help develop writing skills in youngsters five to 25 years old from the UK and Ireland. Judging is overseen by known British writers as well as McCabe of Wicked in London. At the rate Wicked is branching out to other fields, there is no doubt it will spell a longer life for the musical than what is usual.

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