In one week it’s broken box office records for movie musicals. It’s the entertainment news of the week, the theatrical event of the season, and for the first time ever, it’s not just musical theatre fanatics losing their minds over the decades-long anticipated release of the movie. It’s fans of the MGM classic The Wizard of Oz movie, to whom it owes its inspiration. It’s fans of L. Frank Baum’s Oz series of books and their legacy. It’s fans of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 hit book on which the musical is directly based. It’s novices curious of the commercials that have taken over their television shows of this witch flying and screaming at them. And all of them are asking me what I thought of it. So, I figured the best thing to do was to answer them all definitively in the first ever Mark on the Arts movie review. I figure, I’ve reviewed the show on it’s last magnificent tour at the Kennedy Center. I used to review the television “Live” musicals when NBC and Fox were brave enough to air them annually. Why not take on the biggest motion picture/theatrical crossover event since Chicago took home the Best Picture Oscar in 2004 (ironically just weeks before the Tony Awards worked their traditional backwards magic and passed over the breathtaking still-sellout Broadway company of Wicked for Best Musical, awarding instead a funny little dirty puppet show so it would sell better in the road, still one of the most controversial (deliberate) upsets in decades of bad decisions).
So here we are, with Mark on the Arts taking on my most gargantuan review in my 22-year history as a critic. And with the raves flying higher than Elphaba’s broom or G(a)linda’s bubble, I perhaps have the most on the line of any review I’ve ever taken on
So, lets do the unusual and jump straight to the verdict: Wicked is exhilarating. Cinematography as sumptuous as the Alps and Saltsburg in The Sound of Music. Direction as inspired as Chicago. Energy as infectious as Grease. The immortal score by Stephen Schwartz is entirely intact and stage librettist Winnie Holzman teams up with Dana Fox to again provide an enthralling screenplay that likewise honors the stage show with no obnoxious changes or additions to anger the purists and educate the novices on the beauty of the piece.
Yes, with all the speculation on the casting from (outside the theatrical community, who we all forget make up the other 98% of the population) the relative unknown Cynthia Erivo in the pivotal role of Elphaba, the Rising Wicked Witch of the West, to the vocal liabilities of pop princess Ariana Grande as the glamorous Glinda the Good, the movie succeeds on most every level. It is inarguably one of the best movie adaptations ever. Except….well, let’s not spoil all the excessive good will for now. Celebrate that we’ll come to the “except” later.
Starting with the performers, full disclosure: I started out at the total opposite camp of most theatre people in the know. I was an appreciative fan of Cynthia Erivo’s sheer vocal talent ever since her thrilling Broadway debut in the 2015 The Color Purple revival, but have completely loathed the PR nightmare she has become since. [I will include this chapter as an addendum at the end of the review. That way, if any of you want the scoop behind Erivo’s beastly off-stage behavior, you can read it there. If not, or you’d rather maintain your naïvety about her, you can merely continue here and jump off at the end, blissfully unaware.]
Suffice it to say til then, that Erivo is a controversial entity in my eyes and I went in doubting if I could fairly separate her on-screen performance from her off-screen bullying antics. I surprised myself that I was able to be the truest critic and leave all her off-screen nonsense back in Kansas. As much as I may have secretly hoped she’d stumble a bit, she is the perfect embodiment of this piece’s Elphaba. Possessing one of the most soaring, clear voices to ever tackle the role (and the cast has included a Who’s Who of the most legitimate Broadway leading ladies of this millennium, including the multiple Marco Award winning First Lady of American Musical theatre, original Elphaba Stephanie J. Block, who was replaced when producers felt the show needed more star power and recast Idina Menzel). Erivo gives a performance that is subtle when needed, grandiose when expected, and her to-the-rafters delivery of the first act showstopper “Defying Gravity” leaves the audience somewhere between exhilarated and breathless, definitely wanting more. (More on that again later.) She is the perfect outcast in contrast to Grande’s princess-perfect Glinda. And the two have a chemistry which may seem annoying to the press junket but pays off bigtime on screen.
Ariana Grande (performing her under credit of her full name Ariana Grande-Butera—she overcame an estrangement with her father and wanted to use the name of the ten-year-old dreamer who fell in love with the musical when she first saw it as a child), is everything the iconic Glinda should be—elegant, regal, commanding, head-turning, charismatic, as well as originally shallow and comically vapid. Those doubters who criticized her from the minute she was cast were, like me with her costar, silenced when she thankfully threw aside the thin, airy pop voice the industry thrust upon her and returned to her theatrical roots to belt and soar. (Surprisingly, very few theatre fans know that Grande has Broadway credits in Jason Robert Brown’s 13 and did much singing on Nickelodeon’s Victorious and the Sam & Cat spin-off created for her before the pop industry dumbed down her strong, seemingly limitless voice, marketing her as the typical hot diva in a leotard). She handles the score effortlessly and shows her exquisite comic timing perfected during her days on Teen Nick. She looks stunning in every one of Paul Tazewell’s flattering costumes, which leans heavily on every shade of Barbie pink. But as perfect as each of these heroines are individually, like the story, its when combined that their scenes elevate and their voices blend in flawless harmonies and vocal dynamics. Anyone who had any doubt should be enthusiastic that they were unfounded and the movie improves because of that fact.
The entire supporting cast is equally as flawless, but the bulk of the praise is reserved for the 2024 Internet pinup boy Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton, Fellow Travelers) as Fiyero, the handsome, flirtatious Prince of the Winkie Kingdom who trots into Shiz University and immediately steals everyone’s hearts. Bailey has had a bumper year this season, with constant press for the awards circuit of Fellow Travelers bleeding directly into the press junket for Wicked (at one point, he revealed he spent 32 straight days commuting between filming season 3 of Bridgerton, Fellow Travelers, and Wicked), and the Jonathan Bailey Show that has taken over Instagram and TikTok has culminated with this performance. Here he finally gets to show off his musical theatre training few this side of the Atlantic know about (he is an Olivier winner for his portrayal of hysterical gay groom with cold feet Jamie in the recent Company revival in London). Fellow Traveler Matt Bomer confirmed he was rehearsing the demanding Wicked choreography in between takes for their show. If you’re a woman who hasn’t fallen in love with Bailey as the bodice-bursting Lord Anthony Bridgerton, or a guy who hasn’t fallen in love with him as the sensitive McCarthy-era gay Tim Laughlin in Travelers, or a teen who hasn’t fallen in love with his supportive teacher Jack Maddox in Heartstoppers, here’s your chance to jump on the train. Handsome, smooth, sexy, and confident, the camera adores him as he leads the biggest showstopper number of the movie, “Dancing Through Life”, where the entire romantic subplot of the movie gels. With a velvety voice and fantastic footwork (those hours in the trailer paid off), Bailey is the runaway star that could steal the show from his divine leading ladies, if only given the opportunity. But again, more on that later. Let’s continue accentuating the many positives.
In other roles, Marissa Bode as Nessa Rose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-bound sister whom she comes to Shiz to look after, is lovely. So far. Broadway’s Ethan Slater (The SpongeBob Musical, Fosse/Verdon) is delightful as Bok, an awkward Munchkin boy with an unfortunate crush on Glinda. Oscar Winner Michelle Yeoh (Everything, Everywhere All at Once; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) is haughty and menacing as Madame Morrible, a demanding Professor of Sorcery at the University with a devious hidden agenda, and fan-favorite Jeff Goldblum has fun as a congenial if underwhelming Wizard of Oz. But there’s more to all their stories than meets the eye. Again, more to follow later on all of this.
Technically, production designer Nathan Crowley gives us the most visually stunning depiction of Oz since the 1939 MGM classic exploded off the scene with amazing Technicolor. Relying on realism to create his world, (as in planting over 9 million rainbow rows of tulips to establish Munchkinland) it is one of the most sumptuous non-CGI universes every captured on film. The hallowed halls of Shiz are majestic and imposing, the exteriors bright and colorful. Costume designer Paul Tazewell handles a vast array of looks beyond all things Glinda pink and Elphaba’s black-on-black signature wardrobe. The Shiz uniforms in various designs and shades of teal act as fun and interesting costume designs singularly up close and complimentary background to the leading ladies’ specialty uniforms in pink and black en masse. His other impressive designs are the elaborate Asian influenced gowns for Yeoh’s exotic, theatrical Morrible.
In the hands of visionary Jon M. Chu (In the Heights, Crazy Rich Asians), the movie is a visual splendor, an excess of color and scale and scope everywhere it is needed to tell such a vast, beloved tale. Chu succeeds on every count. He’s an actor’s director who gets beautiful and subtle dynamics from his leading ladies and great sexual tension between Bailey and, well everybody including the audience. He’s an action director who gets thrilling vitality in his crowd scenes and the finale chase thorough the Wizard’s Palace. He’s an artist’s director who makes every one of Crowley’s glorious sets frame everything yet pop on their own (cinematography across the board is stunning) He’s a choreographer’s director who dynamically delivers Christopher Scott’s (In the Heights, Step Up, So You Think You Can Dance) elaborate and intricate dance numbers in a manner that is so engaging that they have taken the internet by storm in any variety of dance challenges (so many that they are already getting a little stale). He conceived a clever way to feature original Broadway witches Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth in fun cameos (and I’ll happily grant him the 5 extra minutes that cost us). Chu is the perfect director for this labor of love who has invested his soul in the telling of this iconic tale. Every decision he makes in this story-telling process is undeniably flawless. Except one. And I will stand by this despite the universal love fest that has supported him without question, from fans, cast, and critics. I know I am making my most controversial critique in 20 years of every medium right here and embrace any challenges. The one and only critical flaw of Wicked:
The movie is too damn long. Ridiculously long. Longer than the entire show it’s based on and it only tells the first act.
The movie had no need to be two parts and all the “artistic” justifications in the world still all add up to two words: “cash grab”. Forget “giving the story justice”. The musical does a perfect job in the same amount of time. Forget “beloved theatrical event”. I’d love it more if you told the whole story. Forget “staying true to the characters”. That is not time-dependent. Forget the Twilight and Harry Potter precedents. The truth is this movie has a running time of two hours and 45 minutes, which is incidentally the running time for the entire show on stage. Twilight and Potter were adapted from the books, which always feature so much that needs to be sifted through to get a smooth coherent running time on stage. This one claims to be based on a book too, but it honestly is scene by scene, song by song, most loyally adapted directly from the musical, which already pre-sifted all that filler chaff out to start. Chu has brainwashed the fan girls who still repeat defenses like “they need extra time for reaction shots, and shots to establish the locations and characters,” which is true. But you know what they don’t need? an extra 20-30 minutes for set changes and intermission. I can understand wanting to revel in the beautiful sets and a more thrilling chase through the Emerald City Palace as Elphaba escapes. I can understand wanting to prolong the magic. Within reason. Chu has also defended his decision by claiming “‘Defying Gravity’ is such a breathtaking finale, what can follow it? In the stage show you get intermission to take it all in and a reset for top of Act 2.” Are the moving Act 1 finales of “One Day More” or “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” any less effective when Les Misérables and Gypsy simply carry on with their movies? Either way, he just answered his own question. We’ve sat through a 3+ hour of Les Misérables with no trouble, and Joker: Folies a Deux has also just resurrected the quite welcome Gone With the Wind/Ten Commandments on-screen Intermission. If you feel that strongly about the emotions of the number, why not treat it as honorably as the stage show and give the audience that 10-15 minutes to regroup, refresh, and tell us the rest of the story like every other musical ever filmed has managed to do. The trouble is we get a crap ton of Elphaba/Glinda drama, but all the supporting players suffer in this extended cut from not nearly enough to do. All their characters come into play in Act 2 so we have none of their stories intact, and even when they finish it, will have incomplete performances in that half. All those witty and fun character arcs are bisected and dilute their effect dramatically. I seem to be the only audience member who feels this. The common statement is something to the effect of “I was so engrossed in the world of Oz that I didn’t even feel the time fly by. I can’t wait til next year!”. If you’ve bought into the brainwashing, I can’t change that, but I need a better reason to justify needing 4-5 hours to tell a story that is beautifully, lovingly, and thoroughly told in 2 hours and 45 minutes every night on stage somewhere, something better than “drank the Kool-Aid”. And I admit, I was less emphatic on this point seeing the movie the first time. I bought into some degree of the “Oz is beautiful” nonsense. But try watching it a second time, after you have basked in all the visual magnificence of Oz and realize two hours plus in and they’re just just getting to Emerald City (ironically in a number titled “One Short Day”). It’s two and a half hours before the main character even hints at becoming the title adjective, and then it’s “to be continued…” In truth, Chu’s Achille’s heel is that he fell hopelessly too in love with his project and couldn’t objectively edit his overly-faithful interpretation of it.
So I realize I have no input in the pacing of the movie, and I enthusiastically embrace every other director’s choice Chu has made in the exacting way he has told this neo-classic story, and maybe my 20 year association with the stage show effects my judgment. I’m just very used to seeing my story told in one sitting and can’t imagine any story that is so enthralling that I need a year (and don’t forget next year’s additional $20) to process the magnificence I’ve seen before me. And it was magnificent. Just too damn long and drawn out. Just to grab that aforementioned extra $20. In the end (intermission?), the movie sadly didn’t tell me enough of the tale to consider anyone “Wicked” except maybe the director who fell too in love with his piece, and definitely the studio who will do anything these days for an easy cash grab. So I guess I need to wait a whole year to forget where I left off, stream the movie again, and pay my money to see Act 2 before I see anyone on screen live up to the titular adjective.
To Be Continued…….
ADDENDUM: CYNTHIA ERIVO’S “WICKED” PAST
For those who are curious as to where Cynthia Erivo fell out of my grace, continuing reading at your own risk. If you don’t want your opinion of her tainted, do yourself a favor and jump off here.
Erivo made a splash when she commuted across the Atlantic with the London revival of The Color Purple revival that won her a runaway Tony as Best Actress. I have never doubted her vocal abilities, but I admit I was becoming increasingly tired of her internet bullying over the decade since. In 2018, when the innovative immersive musical Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 somehow came home with the most nominations of the year and zero Tonys, it struggled at the box office when star Josh Groban eventually left. In a regrettable decision, the producers thought it would piggyback on the success of at-the-time unstoppable Hamilton PR juggernaut by hiring a featured player from the sensation, an arrogant buffoon named “Oak”, to take over the role of Pierre. (I loathe this actor so much I can’t even bother to look up his full name, since the Broadway community banded together and came up with the most perfect moniker, “Poison Oak”, which I exclusively use now), who failed to ignite diminishing sales as they had hoped. When one night Broadway legend Mandy Patinkin (Evita, Sunday in the Park with George) attended the event, he contacted the producers with a godsent interest in playing Pierre. But his his availability was limited due to his taping schedule for the Showtime series Homeland. He had a one month window that overlapped with the last two weekends of Poison Oak’s run. They offered to pay him for the two weeks if he’d step down and to extend the two weeks at the end of Patinkin’s proposed run. The arrogant Poison Oak refused this deal and took straight to social media to brand the producers as racist, disrespectful of him, and whitewashing another Broadway lead role. None of which could be any further from the truth. He, nor any of the outsiders he recruited to take up his case, ever mentioned the parts where he showed up to rehearsals unprepared, failed to learn how to play the accordion as the role required, necessitating composer Dave Malloy to fill in for the first few weeks till he was adequately prepared to take over the role. And then the clown had the nerve to take to social media and claim his “entrance to the show was being delayed because they needed extra time to get ready for him”. This misinformation caused a huge blow up on line, fueled by interference from writer/rapper/actor Rafael Casal, a close friend of Poison Oak’s Hamilton costar Daveed Diggs. Casal helped agitate his cause, and then the ignorant, toxic Hamil-freak fandom bought the lie and took it viral. “How dare you disrespect Oak/whitewash a show/erase another black role (it was not, remember Groban and Malloy were the only Pierre’s before his arrogant ass). And then, when it was boiling hotter than it ever should have, enter Erivo, from London, shooting off her mouth knowing nothing of what she’s talking about and, like Casal, focused on a black man being erased by a white man, with no mention of the truth a bout an actor who arrived unprepared and couldn’t sell tickets temporarily making room for a legend who could help, as costar Brittain Ashford did to allow indie singer Ingrid Michaelson temporarily replace her with total gratitude to help her costars retain employment. Sadly Patinkin at this point dropped out as a possibility to avoid being smeared in the controversy and the show folded, with the arrogant, entitled Poison Oak never returning. Ironically, at the time, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet was one of the most inclusive and diversely cast shows on Broadway, and this cost them all jobs. A year later, the cast stopped taking the higher road and blasted Oak, Casal, Erivo, and the toxic Hamil-freaks for ruining an amazing experience for them and their audiences.
Erivo got her deserves a few months later when she was cast in the title role of the highly anticipated Harriet Tubman biopic, when African-American actresses stateside blasted her for taking a role from them–an English actress who was never descended from slaves and did not share their pain. What goes around, come around.
The final rant that soured me on her was the debacle she made about an innocent piece of fan art. In the movies poster, Erivo and Grande are in the roughly the same positions of their Broadway logo (right) counterparts, except Erivo stares the viewer in the eye instead of the brim of her hat slyly hiding her eyes (center). The fan shaded under the brim to hide her eyes and add a smile in a sweet salute to a 20+ year old familiar logo (left). Erivo went on another ballistic, racist tear about how they attempted to “erase her” and she was “personally attacked”, again alienating those of us who struggle with her fabricated nonsense. Even the diva herself realized after the fact it was ridiculous and overreacting, addressing it on a subsequant interview that maybe she “should have talked to some friends first.”
So, with all this extra from Cynthia Erivo, I so wanted her performance in this movie to be less than what everyone hoped. I did not get that satisfaction, and may almost admit that Erivo is worth the drama and nonsense it took to get her here. Almost. See the movie. Sorry, half the movie.