A Wickedly entertaining modern-day political allegory: Wicked at DPAC

by

Scholars have long differed over the possible political and socioeconomic allegories in L. Frank Baum's original 1900 novel. (And please, let's not get started on those Pink Floyd fans.)

But over the past decade, scholars Mark Swartz and Quentin Taylor have finally contrasted murky conjectures about the gold standard, labor unions and Standard Oil with concrete evidence. They found that the Wizard's first stage adaptation, Baum’s own 1901 musical theater script, contained explicit references to political events of the time, and mentioned prominent statesmen and business leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller by name. Apparently from the start, Baum’s Oz never was a land truly all that far away.

Neither is Holzman's. “Something bad is happening in Oz,” an avuncular David De Vries confides early on as Dr. Dillamond, college history professor—and goat—to Vicki Noon's verdant honor student (and wicked-witch-to-be), Elphaba.

The kingdom's animals, which had once been welcome as teachers, students and clergy, are losing the power—and the freedom—of speech. Elphaba's sung response, “It couldn't happen here,” none too subtly paraphrases Sinclair Lewis, before Dillamond finds himself banished from campus. His sinister replacement introduces a new invention, a cage, with the chilling words, “You're going to be seeing more and more of them in the future.”

These events take place against Elphaba's rise as a sorcery student, despite social ostracism based on—of all things—the color of her skin, until she's deemed good enough to be introduced to the Wizard himself.

In that climactic meeting, he reveals needs her magic to help spy on what he calls “subversive animal activities.” Having witnessed their needless suffering and subjugation, Elphaba refuses, whereupon Dick—I mean, the Wiz—says, “When I first got here, there was discord and discontent. Where I come from, everyone knows the best way to bring folks together, is to give them a really good enemy!”

From that point, the fight for the soul of Oz is on. Elphaba flees, while the Wiz's second-in-command—a press secretary—launches a massive PR campaign. Its objectives are to defame Elphaba, convince everyone that the saccharine spoiled brat Glinda (an amusingly vapid Natalie Daradich) is actually the good witch—and maintain the proper level of fear among the populace.

By now it should be obvious: Any similarities between this fictive land and the climate in America in the early years after September 11 is entirely intentional. Created within two years of those attacks, Wicked remains a potent allegory for a time when distrust in government and journalism remains at historically high levels.

Though it occasionally indulges in bathos (in the relatively boilerplate sisters-in-arms-bonding-song “For Good” and the sappy romantic nonsense of “As Long As You're Mine”), Stephen Schwartz' libretto is spangled elsewhere with sharp, political satire. In the act two soft shoe, “Wonderful,” the canny Wizard says, “Where I'm from, we believe all sorts of things that aren't true. We call it—history.” Then he sings, “There are precious few at ease | With moral ambiguities | So we act as though they don't exist.”

Intelligently written and scored, and replete with coups de theatre in both acts, Wicked takes the audience on quite a journey, filling in the backstory on Oz in largely unpredicted ways.

Now, if only modern children—and adults—weren't so in need of a fairy tale whose morals are these: Authority cannot be trusted. The powerful are most concerned with keeping that power. And the popular truth is the one that's been spun, while the real one's the hardest—and most dangerous—to know.