Gregory Maguire: Loving Wicked for the 35th Time
About the author:
As the megahit musical Wicked approaches its fifth anniversary on Broadway, the man who created the characters of Elphaba and Galinda is bringing eager readers the third installment of his “Wicked Years” novels. Of course, given the runaway success of Wicked, Gregory Maguire—whose books have sold more than four million copies—would never have to write another word. But luckily for fans of gripping storytelling, A Lion Among Men goes back to Oz for a tale of war and destiny told from the viewpoint of the Cowardly Lion. To read extensive excerpts from this instant bestseller, click here. Maguire’s life story is just as dramatic as those of his characters: After his mother died in childbirth, baby Gregory spent most of his first two years in an orphanage. His childhood TV viewing centered on one special event, the yearly telecast of The Wizard of Oz. By the time he was 17, this creative powerhouse had written and illustrated more than 100 stories. By all accounts, Maguire is as nice as he is successful. Married to artist Andy Newman and the adoptive father of three children, he recently took time to reflect on the enormous success of the stage version of Wicked and offer a preview of A Lion Among Men.
I’m asked quite often how many times I have seen the musical Wicked, and I give as close to an accurate answer as I can: 34 and a half times over a five year period.
34 and a half? Why the half?
Because once Rosie O’Donnell told me she wanted to see the show again, I replied that I had an “in” for decent seats. We met at the Gershwin Theatre and hid out in a tiny VIP lounge until one minute to curtain. At cue, we entered the orchestra section. Rosie was recognized, of course, from the instant the light fell on her face, inspiring a combustion of applause that grew as heads turned and the crowd focused their gaze. I had a fun time pretending the hubbub was for me, but in fact I received about as much attention as an upholstered bolster.
We sank into the seats just as the announcement about cell phones and cameras was being declaimed, and then the orchestra struck up the first ominous notes of the opening number, and the flying monkeys appeared. For the next 90 minutes I was just marginally less swept away than I usually am, partly because Rosie appeared to be conducting the orchestra from the seat next to me. I’ve never sat next to anyone who entered more enthusiastically into the show. I half expected that when the Wizard’s guards came rushing onstage to capture Elphaba, Rosie was going to scramble out of her seat and crawl across the heads of people sitting in intervening rows and show those guards the business end of her capable fists.
But as the “Defying Gravity” number hit its final thrilling verse, I realized we were about to be pinned by fans of Wicked who were also fans of Rosie. So just after Idina Menzel belted out her gutsy yodel and the stage went dark her green face like a coppery coin the very last scrap of Act One to disappear in darkness, I grabbed Rosie’s hand and hauled her up the aisle during the applause. We barreled along so quickly that we ended up tumbling down the escalators and escaped across the street to a bar.
There we sat out the second act with a couple of beers. We’d both seen the show before—many times—and we chewed over politics, and childrearing, and the politics of childrearing, too. Which is not all that far apart from the themes of Wicked as you might think.
Now, Wicked hits its fifth anniversary on Broadway, and our times are still parlous, though perhaps in a different way from 2003 when it opened. How can Wicked still be drawing in the crowds? Of course, there are repeat goers, perhaps some even beating my own record of 34 and a half times. But it’s more than that.
There have been dozens of theories as to why the play has surprised us all with the monstrous size of its success, but I will trot out my belief, which I have heard too few people suggest.
Forget the female-empowerment thing. Forget the identity politics for any marginalized soul. Forget the way the story comments on current international tensions if you can. Forget even the clever and haunting presence of the original book and film of The Wizard of Oz, such a cultural touchstone in American childhoods. Forget the anthems and the costumes and the dazzling design of it all, the magic of the theater.
The truth, I believe, is because while the story gratifies on a first viewing, the satisfaction intensifies on a second viewing. The story comes clearer, seems deeper. The jokes, once you’ve heard them, are only jokes, but the story takes on a deeper resonance as you begin to recognize the cleverness involved in the construction of the story.
I know that Winnie Holzman librettist and Stephen Schwartz composer collaborated in hammering out the beats and stresses of the story. I think Winnie’s contribution has been underpraised, if only because it is so easy to remember the musical numbers. I also know that some critics, early on, thought the story too complicated, with too many parts. But I think it is that very complication in Wicked, the compression of tangled character development arcs cunningly twisted together, that makes seeing the play over and over so rewarding. Little by little even the stories of the incidental characters—Boq and Nessarose, for instance—take on a vital sobriety and impact. And there is nearly no sung line and very few spoken lines that don’t foretell some trick of fate that will befall the characters in time, once you know what their destinies will be.
Wicked can be enjoyed over and over again because it isn’t all about surprises. It is also about inevitabilities.
Which brings me to the question of why I continue to write about Oz, when Wicked now shows nightly in eight or nine theaters around the globe. Haven’t I had enough?
The question of the way in which we are imprisoned in our skins—be they green or furry—continues to taunt me. I have a new novel out this season, volume III of The Wicked Years: A Lion Among Men. It traces the life of the Cowardly Lion referring briefly to his infancy at Shiz, which we see in Act One of Wicked. But it goes far beyond the Lion’s dalliance with Dorothy, into his middle age, when he struggles to see, really, how he has been affected by his tussle with Elphaba, out there in Kiamo Ko in the west of Oz.
The story picks up bits and pieces from Wicked the novel and the play and from Son of a Witch, volume II of The Wicked Years. It goes further, though, fills in a little bit more about what happens in the Emerald City some years on. Perhaps one might say that the theme of the novel is this: “We may not ever be able to escape fulfilling our destinies, but in acting as if we do have a choice in the matter, we can sometimes make our destinies something of which we might be proud.”
I don’t know how many more times I will see Wicked, but I suspect and hope quite a few more times. Every different Elphaba and Galinda, every separate Madame Morrible and Fiyero and Wizard, every new Nessarose and Boq have shown me that the characters are more than dramatis personae. They are not puppets, or cardboard cutouts, or parodies. They can be played and sung into wild individuality even within the confines of the score and the script. The characters have their destinies, set down for them by Schwartz and Holzman and Maguire and Baum. Within those destinies, though, the actors can make of their characters’ lives something individual, something of which they can be very, very proud.
I feel refreshed myself to realize this. I suspect, sitting in the Gershwin with 1,800 other people, some of them conducting the orchestra or waving their fists or sniffling discreetly into their handkerchiefs, that I’m not alone.
