Review: Wicked
The Evil Witch of the West
Theatre Helsinki City Theatre’s new musical Wicked takes the audience to a dazzling magical world where anything is possible. The technique and teamwork are so great and effortless that only your imagination seems to be the limit to what you see on stage: riding a bubble, melting into the water, growing wings on your back. To begin with.
The show starts from a witch school that is reminiscent of Harry Potter and Hogwarts. Although the musical Wicked premiered in New York City in 2003, the story is much older. It is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire , which is a continuation of L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wizard of Oz from 1900. It was written as a musical by Winnie Holzmann, and the composition and lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz .
The musical stars two women, Maria Ylipää as the outcast, green witch girl, Elfaba, and Anna-Maija Tuokko as Galinda, the most beautiful girl in school, “bimbo blonde”. They know how to sing and much more: fill the stage with energy and their lively presence.
What is this musical all about? Director Hans Berndtsson summed it up in one word at the theatre’s autumn info: tolerance. “There are many of us who are not like the others. In our increasingly globalized world, tolerance becomes a matter of survival.”
Wicked explores his subject on many levels. In the school world, it is a question of how a girl born green will cope with the crowd when everyone, including the teachers, shy away from her. Elfaba and Galinda become roommates. Mutual disgust gradually grows into a strong friendship. This, in turn, is put to the test when the friends fall in love with the same boy, the “genuinely self-centered and deeply superficial” Fiero (Tuukka Leppänen).
Her schoolmates notice that Elfaba, who is considered a loser, is the one who has the courage to defend those who are weaker. There is only one talking animal teacher at the school, the esteemed Dr. Dillamond. He is suspended from office. The disappearance of animals from the teaching staff and their submission to cages is a symptom of a great change. To rescue the animals, Elfaba must travel to the Wizard of Oz. On that journey, the righteous fighter becomes the evil witch of the West.
The musical is bursting with themes that start to get a little out of hand towards the end: friendship, tolerance of differences, growing as a person, longing for love and love, subjugation and freedom even at the level of society. The pop-tuned, swinging music even carries the question of whether a person is born evil or whether evil is instilled in them. Still, the performance is relaxed and loose and elicits many laughs from the audience. Especially Anna-Maija Tuokko, but many other actors also show the comedian’s abilities.
The triumph of the musical Wicked on the world’s stages continues. The Helsinki version is the first so far in which the set designer, Mikael Varhelyi, and the costume designer, Elina Kolehmainen, have been given free rein, with great results.