Team Elphaba

I have finally gotten around to reading Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.  As usual, I'm about 6 years (more or less) behind the trend.  The book is a "parallel novel", written by Gregory Maguire, that tells the story about the events in the land of Oz, from the point of the view of the Wicked Witch of the West. It uses many references from the Baum books and from the 1939 film.

In the L. Frank Baum novels, the Witch isn't given much development, beyond being the antagonist of the story, chasing Dorothy or terrorizing the civilians of Ozland.  In fact, she isn't even given a name.  In Maguire's telling of the times of the Witch, she is given the name Elphaba (a phonetic derivation of L. Frank Baum's initials), and one is led to reconsider what it means to be "wicked" or "good."  Is being wicked really an absolute quality, or do circumstances and outside forces play a larger role?  If anything, the reader is led to be more sympathetic to the Wicked Witch of the West.  I'm certainly looking at the storyline of the film a little differently now.  Anyway, the 1995 book was reworked into a Broadway musical.

Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz, (book written by Winnie Holzman, and music lyrics by Stephen Schwartz) changes several details from the book, but remains a convoluted story about the friendship between Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.  The book explains how both characters become what they become, in a really elegant way, actually. 

Stephen Schwartz has composed many acclaimed musicals.  He wrote the music for Godspell, Pippin (one of my favourite musicals and one he started writing music for while still in college), Children of Eden, and The Magic Show.  He is one of only four composers to have a three musicals run over 1000 performances on Broadway (Wicked, Pippin, and The Magic Show).  The other 3 composers are Andrew Lloyd Weber, Jerry Herman, and Richard Rodgers.

You can also hear his work in movies.  He collaborated with Alan Menken to write songs for Disney's Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and wrote music for The Prince of Egypt.  Again with Menken, he wrote lyrics for Disney's Enchanted, resulting in 3 songs from that production earning nominations from the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Schwartz certainly defies gravity.