Alto on a Broomstick: Voicing the Witch in the Musical Wicked

Dorothy: "But I thought all witches were wicked."

The Good Witch of the North: "Oh, no, that is a great mistake … there is but one Wicked Witch in all the Land of Oz—the one who lives in the west."

—L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Dorothy's confusion was certainly well founded. For hundreds of years witches were the original terrorists, wreaking havoc with their terrible powers wherever they went, from destroying crops to stealing children. Remember our childhood bedtime stories: a witch fattens Hansel and Gretel for eating; a witch feeds Snow White the poisoned apple; a witch lures Sleeping Beauty to the cursed spinning wheel. Dorothy herself encountered one of the most famous fictional witches of all time—the Wicked Witch of the West, portrayed by actress Margaret Hamilton—as she journeyed down the yellow brick road in MGM's classic movie, The Wizard of Oz (1939). Today, though, a girl of Dorothy's age is as likely to practice witchcraft as she is to fear it. Time has loosened the witch's stronghold over public fear and moved her into the realm of fairytales and Halloween paraphernalia, forcing the wicked sorceress to share the public's eye with such upbeat, kind-hearted women as Samantha Stephens of Bewitched and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Nonetheless, the image and the idea of the monstrous witch—a withered old hag who wears a pointed black hat and flies on a broomstick—are still firmly embedded into popular culture.

Since the 2003 opening of the hit musical Wicked, though, even the infamous Wicked Witch of the West has undergone an image overhaul, joining the ranks of Samantha and Sabrina to become the new star of a generation of loveable witches who use their magic for girl power rather than mayhem. Based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire, Wicked places a postmodern spin on the land of Oz and retells the classic story from the Witch's perspective, explaining how she came to be.¹ Serving as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, it reveals that Elphaba (her real name) was never really "wicked" at all, but the victim of an intolerant world unwilling to look beyond the color of her green skin. Through Stephen Schwartz's musical score and Winnie Holzman's stage adaptation, Elphaba becomes a passionate teenage girl who, despite the insurmountable obstacles facing her, refuses to be silenced. Like any other teen, she longs to fit in and over the course of the musical she finds both friendship and love—and for a fleeting moment, even social acceptance. Elphaba's green skin is an open metaphor that can represent any sort of difference, impediment, or feeling of alienation, and Wicked fans draw inspiration from her plucky determination to remain true to herself against all odds.

Nonetheless, despite Wicked's overtly celebratory tone, the musical delivers a biting social critique (albeit softened by the elaborate staging and catchy tunes, and by the show's touching portrayal of female friendship). As David Walsh and Len Platt write, "Musicals, like all popular texts and forms of art, have an explicitly reflexive relationship with the societies from which they stem;" musicals often reveal "the rotten teeth in the utopian smile of the American Dream."² Wicked is no exception. The world of Oz, as presented in the musical, is politically corrupt. Wicked's Wizard is no longer the bumbling-but-kindly ruler of 1939 but a conniving dictator who uses Elphaba as a scapegoat in order to manipulate the public's fear to his political advantage. None of Elphaba's good deeds can overturn the public perception of her unusual appearance and she is forced to accept that, even though she was born in Oz, her homeland holds no place for her. Although the musical unfolds in a fantasy setting, the land of Oz—where the mistrust of anyone different alienates and victimizes many innocent people—is strikingly reminiscent of our modern world. During an interview, Schwartz acknowledged that he parallels Elphaba's plight to the...