Let’s begin this review with a question, not an opinion: Is “Wicked” the most popular musical created this century?
Consider: This weekend the New York staging sees its 7,000th performance. Its Broadway run alone has defied financial gravity, collecting more than $1.3 billion at that box office.
In 18+ years, around the country and the world, touring versions have been seen in more cities than any other musical, more than 100 towns in 16 countries so far.
The road production now at Segerstrom Hall over the next month is its fifth Costa Mesa visit. At this writing, coming off the omicron spike when Segerstrom shows struggled to sell, the advance sale is robust with fewer than 100 seats left for child-friendly matinees over the next couple weekends. (Advice for a kid outing: Aim for the 2 p.m. Feb. 27 performance.)
What drives the appeal of this show?
In 2003 the major critics whiffed on getting it. Forever America’s supreme arbiter of live theater, The New York Times ruled in a dismissing tone, “’Wicked’ does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the Broadway musical.” (For getting it even wrong-er, The New Yorker’s take on the show’s 22 songs: “… not one of them is memorable.”)
But what those opening-night eyes and ears failed to register was the show’s “it” factor, which walloped me again Thursday night: Girl power! And at a level matching the energy of MCU superheroes of any gender.
“Wicked” is the rare Broadway musical to feature two female lead characters. A preamble/parallel to the original ‘Wizard of Oz,” the story, based loosely on Gregory Maguire’s novel, refocuses on the two main witches in a recounting of the Oz storyline from their points of view.
These college-age women do vie in romantic competition, but the tale is more interested in their self-discovery journey, how they feel about themselves and each other while growing and changing as they confront unexpected truths about their world.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot to mention: “Wicked” is fabulous fun!
The musical continues to conjure up the almost impossible magic of appealing across all age levels. Its propulsive action and color and a big-bang score can be mesmerizing for the youngest attendees, while being witty and wise about adult issues like skin-tone shaming, political cynicism and whether or not it’s better to bottle up one’s flying monkeys or free them to go wild.
A main conversation about any production of “Wicked” centers on the two actresses undertaking the lead roles of Glinda and Elphaba. How each of them does it, and how they do it together, is a key driver for whether the production will levitate and at what height.
Even at her self-proclaimed height of 4-foot-11, Kristin Chenoweth’s original Glinda still casts a long shadow over successors taking on what super fans believe is still her role.
Perhaps the highest accolade for Allison Bailey’s current exploration of the character is that she reminds you of nobody else. Being herself is all it takes.
Glinda, to put it affectionately, is as entertainingly spoiled, pretty and, well, blonde — hey, Elphaba says it about her, not just me! — as one could hope for. But beyond the hair tosses and self-aware flirtatiousness built into the role, Bailey brings a startling and unexpected physicality to punctuate Glinda’s actions.
As the first act went forward, I was eagerly anticipating her every next move, wondering not just when the next leg kick or elbow thrust would arrive, but also a bit dazed at how well thought-out and choreographed the actress’s reading was in manifesting Glinda’s inner vibrancy as well as repressed vulnerabilities.
Elphaba is the brainy counterpoint, and Talia Suskauer’s treatment of this older-and-wiser-than-her-years woman — one burning with a social conscience and an acute understanding of all the ways she fails to fit in — was sourced in acting that that is affectingly internalized.
Not an easy feat is as joyfully noisy a show as “Wicked” is.
An interesting quality of their shared performances is that in a musical with famous star-vehicle solos “Popular” and “Defying Gravity,” I was more drawn to their communal songs about their changing relationship. Early loathing, amusing in the wry “What Is This Feeling?,” ripening through friendship to culminate in the revelatory “For Good” provides vocal takeaways from the evening.
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Other performances of note include Broadway veteran and Tony Award-winner Cleavant Derricks’ puckish, vaudevillian turn in the wizard’s lament of “Wonderful.” As the self-proclaimed brainless — winningly stated in “Dancing Through Life” — Jordan Litz as Fiyero is more than the show’s hunk, nicely unveiling his inner life as he struggles with which witch to woo.
A final take-away. “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba’s belted declaration of independence at the end of the first act, is one of musical theater’s biggest showstoppers.
But just after, with the curtain coming down, the lights coming back up, in a mostly full theater of a charged-up audience buzzing an excited hum at what they’d just been hit with. Don’t we all deserve some exhilarated mojo like this right about now?
‘Wicked’
Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of 4)
When: Through March 6. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays
Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
Tickets: $44.75-194.75
Information: 949-556-2787; www.scfta.org
COVID-19 protocols: Attendees are required to show proof of full vaccination and photo I.D. to enter the theater. Any ticket holders (including those under age 12) without proof of full vaccination can present a negative COVID-19 test (PCR taken within 48 hours or antigen taken within 6 hours) of the performance. At-home test results are not accepted. Regardless of vaccination status, masks are required to be worn in all indoor spaces. Disposable 3-ply surgical masks, N95, KN95, or KF94 masks are recommended.