With its flying monkeys and magical shoes, oh my, the story of the Wizard of Oz has been lodged in the popular imagination for over a century.
It is, after all, an archetypal American myth: an epic of good and evil, the comfort (and dreariness) of home, the draw (and freedom) of the road, the perils of power and the yearning for transformation.
The 1939 film with Judy Garland, in particular, is so embedded in the American cinematic DNA that it’s inspired everyone from Martin Scorsese to David Lynch, Spike Lee and John Waters, who once called (accurately!)
the wicked witch “every bad little boy’s and girl’s dream of notoriety and style.”I wonder what Waters will make of “Wicked” and its green-hued, deeply sincere heroine, Elphaba, a ready-made meme machine played by Cynthia Erivo in what becomes a showstopper of a performance.
Both the character and the actress are the strongest draws in this splashy, largely diverting, tonally discordant and unconscionably long movie, which is the first installment in a two-part adaptation of the Broadway show “Wicked.” That juggernaut opened at the Gershwin Theater in 2003 and shows no signs of (ever) closing; it will presumably still be raking it in when “Wicked Part Two” is set to open in November 2025.
Persons:
Oz, Judy Garland, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Spike Lee, John Waters, Waters, Cynthia Erivo
Organizations:
Gershwin