"Defying Gravity": Queer Conventions in the Musical Wicked

The musical Wicked, which opened on Broadway in 2003 and is the top-grossing musical of the twenty-first century, features certain elements of a contemporary megamusical, including spectacular visual effects, musical themes that thread through the score, and global capitalist marketing, distribution, and production practices. But, as I demonstrate in this essay, Wicked’s narrative and musical structure relies on the building blocks of the “integrated” musical developed and conventionalized during the 1940s and 1950s by Rodgers and Hammerstein and their peers. By starring two women as its principal characters, and by employing mid-twentieth-century musicals’ conventions of speech, music, lyrics, and dance, this prequel to The Wizard of Oz tells a queer and feminist romance. This essay explores recent scholarship on musical theatre to consider how Wicked navigates the politics of race, how it represents a remarkably appealing girl protagonist, and how it interpellates its audience through old conventions to tell a new and progressive story.