Wicked by Graham Corcoran
If you happen to be a tourist in London you will be aware that taking in a show, and ideally a musical, is tantamount to a legal requirement of the trip. After all, the Tower of London, Big Ben et al are well and good but to return home without having seen Phantom or The Lion King…..well, how would you explain yourself to the neighbours back in Washington, Tyne and Wear or Akron, Ohio?
More than fifteen million people attend West End productions every year, many, if not most of them, choosing musicals. Contemplation of this extraordinary number led me to ponder whether my own failure ever to have attended such a show, based on the suspicion it wouldn’t be for me, might be after all horribly misguided. Perhaps I was the one missing out.
Perhaps I was the one missing out
There was nothing for it but to try to find out.
A quick online search to locate a popular show with a reasonable ticket price ensued. After discounting Mamma Mia on the grounds of happening to be male – and ruling out various other blockbusters for reasons of exorbitant cost – I eventually plumped for Wicked, a kind of alternative version of The Wizard of Oz and the ninth longest-ever running West End show.
The Guardian described it as ‘Packed with wit, storming songs and beautiful costumes’ and though I can’t say beautiful costumes per se have previously done much to personally set the pulse racing, who is immune to laughter and a good tune?
After filing through a crowd of people representing all the nations of the earth, I wedged myself into a seat whose dimensions would gladden Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s heart. With that and the sauna-like temperatures, it was hard to concentrate, but the set was certainly eye-catching, a huge dragon’s head protruding out centrally and below and behind it a huge map of Oz, the emerald city glowing green at its heart.
I wedged myself into a seat whose dimensions would gladden Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s heart
Suddenly music started up and various people in beautiful costumes began to sing and move around the stage. A blonde lady done up as a classic Disneyesque white fairy hovered across the stage in a kind of swing contraption and began to relate the story of Wicked.
Rather than attempt to give any kind of coherent explanation of the plot, a task far beyond my powers, I will merely quote the show’s website:
‘WICKED tells the incredible untold story of an unlikely but profound friendship between two young women’ (‘unlikely’) ‘who first meet as sorcery students at Shiz University: the blonde and very popular Glinda and a misunderstood green girl named Elphaba.’
If you find the last six words of that sentence troubling in any way, this is not the show for you.
If you find the last six words of that sentence troubling in any way, this is not the show for you
Eventually, three hours passed, with lots of singing and lessons learned – from the worthlessness of seeking popularity to the greatest moral good of all – that, naturally, of remaining ‘true to yourself’. Despite an early and surprising reference to original sin (‘Are people born wicked?’), deep questions around free will and nature/nurture never really materialised, and a more representative utterance was along the lines of, ‘I have to go to the Emerald City – what happened to the monkeys was my fault.’Â
The singing, the playing of the musicians in the pit, the choreography, and the beautiful costumes, were all quite superb and it was clear that people enjoyed themselves tremendously (not least the man two rows in front who laughed so loudly and so often at the slightest provocation that I began to envy him).
At the end of it, beyond vague notions of ‘spectacle’, and the ‘event’ status, personal understanding of what people enjoy about this kind of thing is no greater than before, but I am evidently the one missing out.
As the French say, ‘chacun a son gout’ – a truth that in no way diminishes the fact that few things in life are more mystifying than the ways others get their kicks.
