There are three major distinctions between the stage and screen when it comes to adaptations like Wicked. The first is one of verisimilitude. The suspension of disbelief an audience affords to a theatre production is a thousand miles off of what they’ll forgive in contemporary cinema. On Broadway, talking goat professor Doctor Dillamond needs only to be an actor wearing plastic horns, whereas the big screen is a lot more open to scrutiny, ultimately going for a CG render voiced by Peter Dinklage. As far as compromises go, it’s not a bad one.
Wicked is the long-overdue adaptation of the 2003 eponymous musical (the second best-selling of all time, after The Lion King), which was itself a retooling of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 prequel to The Wizard Of Oz. In other words, the story has gone through a significant number of refinements and renditions over the years before arriving in this current form, making it, if nothing else, a supremely sturdy and well-oiled machine.
Being set entirely in the fantastical world of Oz, the story follows witches-in-training Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) as they go from enemies to friends in a time of surprisingly knotty political turmoil. The key word here is fantastical, as while novels and stage musicals can work around depicting Oz’s many wondrous locations, director Jon M. Chu has to do it for real, and achieves far more than one might reasonably have expected. Shiz Academy for one feels like a real school, with its potions classrooms and crystalline caverns, all while refraining from ever falling into the trap of recreating that other popular wizarding academy.
The musical numbers also do a great deal for demonstrating the spontaneous and variable nature of Oz with each possessing a markedly unique rhythm complemented by Chu’s experiments in choreography, editing and camera technique. A split-screen device employed for “What Is This Feeling” feels worlds apart from the galavanting spectacle of “Dancing Through Life” or the nutty, Means Girls-esque comedy of “Popular”. Wicked will no doubt receive some criticism for its over-reliance on CGI, but between its lived-in sets and personalised set-pieces, there can be no doubt that the world of Shiz feels not only deep, but truly immersive.
The other accusation being levelled against Wicked brings us to the second difference of note between the stage and screen; its duration. It is public knowledge that this film adapts only the first half of the production, ending with the traditional Act One finale of “Defying Gravity”, with Part Two (already filmed) returning to pick up the pieces next Christmas. As fans of the musical will know, this is in practice a non-issue. More than most Broadway shows, Wicked is a cleanly bisected narrative, with each half serving as a complete story in-and-of-itself. Most crucially, the enemies-to-friends arc between Elphaba and Glinda plays out in its entirety across Act One, affording the story enough finality that the ‘To Be Continued’ title card feels less like a cheap anti-climax here than it might in some other, more laborious franchises.
Wicked has also been challenged on its exceptionally long run-time, being almost the length of the stage show in full despite adapting only half of the plot. It is a testament to Chu, his crew and his performers that this never feels like needless elongation. Indeed, the film still sometimes feels breathless in its race from points A to B, and to this writer’s knowledge includes no additional scenes or storylines.
The real reason for the extension is simply one of cinematic language; in the theatre, scene transitions, set-pieces and even character development can be kept concise, as the suspension of disbelief is already so high that a blossoming friendship need only be described as such once to become true.
The screen version however, needs more time to land these beats properly; the filmed version of “Defying Gravity” featured here is nearly fifteen minutes long, while even “Popular” runs to about five. This is to allow for pauses, extra lines of dialogue and complicated movements that would be skipped past elsewhere. In short, a feature film allows you to play emotions for longer than the stage might, and so the kinetic moments of bonding between Elphaba and Glinda are giving breathing space here that isn’t always possible elsewhere.
This tees us up nicely for the third and final bridge between the stage and screen; the performances. There is no question that the primary storytelling advantage that cinema has over theatre is that of the close-up. Cameras can not only pick-up on the slightest of micro-expressions, but also hold on them for sometimes agonisingly long periods of time. The Ozdust Ballroom sequence in Wicked is of course a pivotal scene in the play, famously including a pause for five-or-six seconds of pained silence. In this new adaptation, that same beat is sustained for over a minute, as the pain and humiliation across Erivo’s face brings down the house more profoundly than any spectacular firework or musical high-note could.
It goes without saying that the performances meeting Chu’s camera are of a consistently high-standard here. Ariana Grande is such an instant movie star that you’d assume she’d been a leading lady all her life, while Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero is absurdly swoon-worthy (even if he looks, generously, ten years too old to be in any school). It is ultimately Erivo who steals the show however, playing the part of Elphaba with more subtlety and poignance than Broadway can typically allow for. Her rage, particularly in the film’s third act, is as palpable as that in any Oscar-drama, and should be taken into serious consideration by the Academy come next March.
For those keeping count, Wicked is three-for-three in ticking my boxes for a perfect musical adaptation, and it really is a case where the project is every bit the sum of its parts. There is a sense of true affection and admiration for the source material here, and not just from Grande and Erivo (who have cried vast, vast quantities of tears over the last fortnight of promo). The film permeates pure joy and attentiveness of craft, giving so much that it is easy to forgive a few minor issues (if you must know, they’re all on Twitter anyway). Like Hello Dolly, West Side Story and Chicago before it, Wicked raises the bar against which all Broadway adaptations will be held for years to come. You might even say it... defies gravity. I wouldn't though, personally.
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