Broadway: Some Wicked Thoughts

My friends will verify that I have had a long, antagonistic history with The Wizard of Oz. No matter how many times I tried to watch, I've never had the pleasure of completing this movie. Whether due to childhood boredom/attention deficit, power outages, equipment failure, and even the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (it was supposed to air on TV, but got preempted by the more important news updates), some powerful force was telling me not to watch this movie. When a powerful force bars me from watching a certain movie, the last thing on my mind is watching that movie.

Now let the record state that despite this minor mishap, I still like apple pie. Coke is a different matter.

So then comes Wicked, the musical prequel/different point of view story of The Wizard of Oz. I was scheduled to watch Wicked, and I am always up for watching a musical since it's what I like doing and it makes for a wonderful date night activity. Or at least, that's what my girlfriend tells me. This was the first time I felt that a musical required me to do my homework before watching. And like the ace student I was during high school, I ignored my homework.

I will say that Wicked is sung, choreographed, and presented well. But something kept bugging me about the story. Though I never was able to watch The Wizard of Oz, I was able to remember a few things from the movie. The Wicked Witch of the West is bad. The Scarecrow, The Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion join a runaway farm girl along a yellow brick road. Red slippers don't match country farm girl attire. And the whole experience is a dream at the movie's end.

The curtain rises and the first act rolls along. I am seriously not bonding well with the characters. I'm waiting for the Wicked Witch to shoot up the campus setting. Things get better when the two lead girls reach Emerald City now that I can predict who is becoming the Wicked Witch. I also see Glinda's personality evolving into an annoying pain who reminds me of the Miss Populars who I ate for breakfast in middle school.

It is when the second act comes about and I see the Wicked Witch is fleeing that I finally realize what is bothering me:

Wicked is Springtime For Hitler.

It makes perfect sense. Imagine the end of the Third Reich. Hitler lies dead. Kaput. Devoid of life. This... is an ex-megalomaniac. Everyone in the free world cheers. Then some time later, a bird fanatic named Franz Liebkind decides to write a play about the history and gradual change of Hitler with a positive spin. He wasn't born bad, things made him bad. Despite being born with a Hitler mustache and being named Adolf Hitler, he tried to be a good man. He went to school and met popular classmates like Patton and Monty, who became his friends. Hitler was an excellent painter. "He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!" Then Hitler was given the opportunity to change the world and he took it. He didn't plan to cause such a revolution. The PR spin doctors making him out to be the villain didn't help things much. But towards the end of the play, the audience learns to feel Hitler's plight and who knows, they sympathize for Hitler as Monty and Patton follow a yellow brick road on their way into Berlin.

You know what happens here. Scheming Producers Bialystock and Bloom snag this story and turn it into one of the funniest musicals to grace Broadway. Now replace Hitler with the Wicked Witch of the West and you've got Wicked.

Now you may say that comparing Wicked to Springtime for Hitler is like comparing apples to oranges and I say you're right. They're both nutritious fruit that grow on trees and contain seeds and make for some wonderful juices. What bugs me is the need to explain or justify the actions of a historic villain and placing a positive spin on such a villain. Is there really a need to humanize our villains? They're already great characters who are etched into our memories simply because they are already great characters. I mean she's called the Wicked Witch of the West, not the Well Intentioned but Misunderstood Who Was Caught Up in a Large Misunderstanding Witch of the West. What's next, will George Lucas plan to produce a Star Wars trilogy dedicated to explaining the origin, development, and transformation of the galaxy's greatest villain Darth Vader and reveal it that he became such a villain because of love?

Oops.