On October 30, 2003, a Broadway musical opened that purported to tell the "Wizard of Oz" story from the witches' point of view. The show was epic in scope and even included a socko flying number to end the first act.
Critical reaction to "Wicked" was mixed at first, but audiences raved and have been flocking to the Stephen Schwartz/Winnie Holzman musical ever since. In fact, tonight marks a full 10 years since the opening of "Wicked" at the Gershwin Theater.
What explains the extraordinary success of "Wicked" which, despite having lost the Tony for Best Musical to the equally wonderful "Avenue Q", has long outlasted "Q" on Broadway (though the latter is still playing at a midtown off-Broadway house, New World Stages)?
First off, there's the relationship between Glinda and Elphaba, the show's witch pair. Their rivalry-friendship-rivalry, which is wrecked by political events in the outside world, is charming, moving and, as Daily Beast writer Kevin Fallon put it, the heart of the show. It also didn't hurt that original leads Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel were powerhouse performers with great mutual chemistry to go with being able to put over winning songs like "Popular" and "Defying Gravity".
If you were a parent with a girl between ages 7-16 in 2003, you could take her to "Big River" (about boys), "Taboo" (about Boy George), "Master Harold...and the Boys" (about a bad boy) or the invariable "Fiddler on the Roof". But then a show comes along with two young women, just on the brink of adulthood, who become the best of friends and then take on a forbidding world by using their unique powers, together and apart. Well, which box office would you be running to?
Fast forward a decade later. Now you've got "Annie" and "Cinderella" (for the littler ones - or at least perceived as such), "Big Fish" (about a man-boy), "Jersey Boys" (about Jersey boys) and, admittedly, "Matilda". Then again, the success of "Wicked" had to be on the minds of every producer approached to mount "Cinderella" and "Matilda" (not to mention "Little Women" and "Shrek").
"Wicked" has more than 4100 performances under its hat, which puts the musical at #11 on the all-time longest-running Broadway shows list. (It's just behind the still-running "Mamma Mia" and a thousand performances behind "Rent", so it won't be making an leaps on that list anytime soon.) Carole Kane, of "Taxi" fame, is the current Madame Morrible, playing opposite Alli Mauzy's Glinda and Lindsay Mendez's Elphaba. Unlike, say, "The Producers", that appeared poised to run forever when it opened but couldn't survive the loss of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, "Wicked" has seen Witches (and post-Joel Grey wizards) come and go, yet the tuner still grosses upwards of $1.5 million a week.
I guess the ultimate reason for "Wicked'" longevity then isn't the score (which is uneven), isn't the Menzel-Chenoweth dynamic (they're long gone to other things), isn't the set design/ special effects (every show has that now, including flops like "Ghost" and the troubled "Spider-Man"), isn't the plot-heavy but gripping book and isn't just the appeal to teenage girls. It's all of these things put together. "Wicked" is not just a musical, it's a SHOW. You come out of the Gershwin Theater knowing that everyone has worked at the top of their game to create something exciting, funny, touching and dazzling. Does it work every minute? Of course not. Does it work most of the time? Ask the next 7 million or so people who come to experience its magic.
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