Review: Wicked
Wicked reflects on difference and the origin of evil
Musicals are spectacular, entertaining – and often quite trivial. Helsinki City Theatre’s Wicked is from another world. At the premiere, the audience gave a standing ovation.
The story is connected to the United States’ own fairy tale mythology, the Land of Oz. It originated in 1900 in L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz (also translated as The Land of Oz and The Magician of the Land of Oz). The book grew into a 15-volume series of Oz books. The 1939 film musical The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming, widely spread the Wizard of Oz to the consciousness of generations of Americans.
Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s hugely popular Broadway musical Wicked (2003) is a multifaceted exploration of the acceptance of difference and the origin of good and evil. The musical is based on Gregory Maguire’s young adult novel The Witch: The Life and Deeds of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995).
In Wicked, the opposing forces are the self-absorbed blonde Glinda (the absolutely brilliant comedian Anna-Maija Tuokko) and the green-skinned Elphaba (Maria Ylipää), who become roommates in the school dormitory.
The birth of the Green Witch
In the Land of Oz, animals have been able to speak, but times are changing. Animals are deprived of their ability to speak and locked in cages. Elphaba rises up against the development and, thanks to the Wizard’s plot, becomes a representative of evil, a green witch that everyone fears.
The musical seems to claim that this is the world now: evil is good and the representative of good is, if not completely evil, at least selfish. In the world, there is a lot of grey between black and white.
Perhaps the most tragic character in Wicked is the goat, the teacher Dillamond (Heikki Sankari). He is deprived of his office and human speech. The teacher is treated like a Jew in Nazi Germany.
The Price of Love
The plot of the musical is sprawling and diverse. After many twists and turns, in the end, love wins, as it should, but the price is oblivion. The lovers, Elphaba and Fiyero (Tukka Leppänen), who has turned into a scarecrow, are forced to flee the community. The heaviest burden remains with those who know what happened to them but cannot tell the truth. So the community is always living in some kind of lie.
Fairy tales can also have a bitter aftertaste. Especially in good fairy tales, like Wicked . Directed by Hans Berndtson and handled by the Helsinki City Theatre’s skilled musical machinery, the performance is also good, if not excellent.