WICKED
Wicked is phenomenal! A blockbuster of such dizzying magnitude in terms of audience adoration that it defies critical analysis. With box-office receipts of over $1 million per week since it opened on Broadway ten years ago, this musical version of what happened in the Land of Oz before Dorothy and Toto came along, is indestructible.
It was the first musical to mine what has become a fertile field of ‘girl empowerment’ stories – think Legally Blonde and Frozen. The story of how Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West became friends and roomies at Wizard school speaks to a whole generation of young girls and women and, if yesterday’s audience reaction was any indication, looks like doing so for many years to come.
This Australian production may have had a few cast changes since it first opened at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre in 2008, but its magic is still evident in the performances of Jemma Rix and Suzie Mathers.
Rix is the perfect Elphaba. With a voice of steel she negotiates Schwartz’s power-ballads like a true diva delivering an impassioned and star performance as the green-faced introvert. “Defying Gravity” is wondrous, as is “The Wizard and I,” and “No Good Deed.”
Mathers is also perfect as Glinda. With her glittering soprano trills and delicious comic perk, especially in “Popular”, the role of the self-centred do-gooder could not be in better hands. The show lifts whenever they’re on-stage (which thankfully is most of the performance), with their final duet “For Good” a vocal knockout.
The rest of the performers don’t stand a chance against Rix and Mathers. The male roles as written are all either weak or ineffective. Steve Danielson gives a standard Disney-hero performance as Fiyero and registers strongly in his duet with Rix on “As Long As You’re Mine”; Simon Gallaher’s Wizard is enhanced by some good vocal work and cakewalks nicely on “Wonderful”, but Boc in Edward Grey’s hands is still a cipher in the plot. His other-half, Emily Cascarino, gracefully rises above the heavy-handed subtext of the wheelchair-bound Nessarose, whilst Maggie Kirkpatrick’s authority-driven Madame Morrible could comfortably find a home at Hogwarts.
Eugene Lee’s sets, with their mechanical cogs and wheels, seemed to have come via Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. They’re big and spectacular, and especially gorgeous when the stage is awash with green for the Emerald City. Susan Hilerty’s costumes are colourfully exotic, Kenneth Posner’s lighting is flashy, while conductor David Young builds each musical applause-button for maximum effect. But, whenever Wicked threatens to bog down, and it does frequently, Rix and Mathers are there to rescue it. They make it soar. That’s undeniable star power!
Peter Pinne
Images: Jemma Riz and Suzy Mathers (photogrpher: Andrew Ritchie), & Simon Gallaher.
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