No rest for the ‘Wicked’
Having slept at several points during past stagings of Wicked, I, of course, am not the best person to talk about why you should see the film sequel Wicked: For Good.
The young girls in costume packed into cinema seats at Ayala Cinema in Glorietta 4: it’s for them, really, including those who memorized every song in the catalogue.
For me, Part 1 of John Chu’s Wicked has its showstopping song. That’s Defying Gravity. The sequel has one great song, repeated several times: For Good showcases Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s interweaving harmony lines, and it’s a good summation of what makes Wicked: For Good work.
When Erivo and Grande are on, there’s magic. Especially when the gloves come off during a witch fight midway through over Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has misgivings about marrying Glinda (Grande), whom the kingdom of Oz look upon as a paragon of goodness. Fiyero still carries a flame for Elphaba (Erivo), and you can see where the problem lies.
The way Chu’s direction manages to focus our attention on these two lifts it far above the stage versions I’ve seen.
Otherwise, I felt the familiar tug of sleepiness in the opening setup of this sequel. Broken into Acts 1 and 2, just like the stage version, this sequel falls prey to the too-slow reignition that can occur when the curtain rises on an Act 2—after everyone has had a cocktail and used the loo before settling back into their theater seats. It sets us up for Elphaba’s campaign against the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who have led a propaganda drive against animals and Elphaba herself. But the exposition is at times as lumbering as the oxen in the opening scene.
Skip to Goldblum’s arrival, playing a skilled peddler of hokum, dueting with Glinda and Elphaba on Wonderful, and things perk up. Back in its original staging, Wicked had a strong message about scapegoating, targeting immigrants, and the dangers of swallowing lies from powerful leaders. That message obviously has even greater resonance in today’s Trumpian landscape, and Goldblum’s Oz seems to dwell in the same reality distortion field, complete with propaganda pamphlets and locking up those proclaimed as “animals.”
Not that you need this political allegory to enjoy a good sing-along. Goldblum, as always, has a certain sly, sleight-of-hand delivery that makes his pathological liar almost bearable.
Bailey, a big draw with the swooning young girls, manages to take his shirt off with Erivo in a didn’t-really-need-it love scene. Bowen Yang again has his comic moments, though one feels the charm of the side characters is engulfed by the sheer scale and machinery of this big-budget sequel.
Still, you can’t deny Grande plays the “good,” popular girl who is not sure she deserves all of her acclaim and attention like no one else could. Erivo adds emotional depth, and after losing so many loved ones, it’s understandable that she would embrace being “bad.” Bad is in badass. She frees Oz’s penned animals and uses her winged money squad to set things right in Oz. But she also casts a lot of shady spells, which are not sufficiently explained in the exposition.
What also plays well in Wicked: For Good is that the events of The Wizard of Oz are sidelined. Dorothy shows up, her Kansas house plopping down on top of Elphaba’s sister, but we never actually see her, except for a shadow on a castle wall bearing a bucket of water. If anything, Dorothy and her three companions, Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow, are depicted as privileged Karens, demanding something from the manager, while stomping all over the rest of Munchkin Land. Their good intentions are irrelevant to what’s really going on in Oz.
And this, of course, is an underlying message of Wicked: that history is too often told by the liars, the victors, those who benefit and profit. Not the architects behind the struggle.
In sum, Wicked: For Good lags in the beginning and isn’t quite as good as Part 1. But the way it centralizes a friendship between two females who have grown and found their strengths from one another at least offers a pretty good role model for young women.