theseerasures

[theseerasures]

MOMENT 2: "Frustrating!" Fiyero declares to Morrible's question, catching Glinda's eye as he keeps talking. Glinda nods in affirmation before an exasperated Morrible derails him by announcing the engagement. Glinda responds with ecstatic shock, while Fiyero does a "haha big joke" laugh before double taking at the congratulotions banner.

this point kind of feeds into the first by highlighting that PR has been Fiyero's job (at least part-time) for the past five years, too. Ryan does a good job of showing that it has been five years; you expect Glinda to be polished no matter what, but FIYERO being this well trained is something else. the sulky little face he makes right after Morrible interrupts him is just like...he's used to this. this is typical Madame. (Nancy's fed up look right after "frustrating!" implies she's used to him too.) it's a pretty rare take on Fiyero in TG, and i don't think it's mandatory--most Fiyeros unknowingly or knowingly contrast with Glinda and Morrible on the podium by being less smooth and practiced, and i've liked many of them.

this version does feel pretty special though, because it subtly underscores what Glinda and Fiyero's relationship has been like during the act break. Fiyero had been instinctively attuned to Galinda's feelings as early as the Ozdust, and now that's matured into them...well. working in tandem. he's clearly been doing enough of this stuff with her to know the workings; he checks in as she moves aside so he can take over, and she trusts him enough to back him even though his comment was clearly not scripted. they're a team.

once again i don't think every Glinda and Fiyero need to have this precise dynamic at Act Two's outset. tbh it's better if they don't; even Katie and Ryan are kinda straining credulity here by the time of the surprise engagement drop, because i'm left wondering what could compel Glinda to both a) knowingly acquiesce to the entrapment, and b) hide it from Fiyero for any amount of time. did Morrible just slide the ring on her finger five minutes before they went on and tell Glinda not to worry about it? anyway. for a lot of TGs i have no sense of what Fiyero and Glinda's relationship has been like for the past five years, or why either of them wanted to stay together that entire time. and i do think it's mandatory that the show answers these two questions, because Fiyero's outburst later in the number doesn't mean as much when we don't know what status quo he's disturbing. he has to be present enough that we see why Glinda both depends on his presence and takes it for granted, so it's all the more devastating when he's not present anymore.

[theseerasures]

MOMENT 1: Ozians sing "we couldn't be happier/thank goodness" at Madame Morrible's encouragment. Fiyero smiles down at the crowd while Glinda ducks in slightly to make the face a service worker makes right before she greets the customer who came in as she was about to close

tbh it just makes me giggle, but i also think this tiny choice puts the right foot forward in establishing the function of Thank Goodness within and outside of the text. very often the song is treated as a Glinda solo where she gets to check in with her own feels, but Thank Goodness, by virtue of being the Act Two opener, has to do a lot more than that. we need to catch the audience up on what's happened and at the same time make the case that THIS particular scene and moment is our best re-entry to all the drama. Thank Goodness is a social, transitional number. everyone on stage is doing something, and the thing Glinda is doing is working.

it gets lost in the fantasy totalitarianism, but Glinda and Fiyero in Act Two are, fundamentally, young adults with jobs. Fiyero even gets an explicit promotion during this number. i enjoy ragging on Glinda for being an influencer, but in reality her role in Oz has way too much structure. Glinda's work is more like the work of Disney cast members, or public speakers, or propagandists, or Argentine First Ladies. she is performing emotional labor in the traditional sense in exchange for compensation. i have no idea what that compensation IS because it's probably not an actual salary--dresses? cunty hats? days of continued existence?--but it's coming from an institution outside of herself.

and thinking of her this way--girlemployee!Glinda, as opposed to girlboss!Glinda or hostage!Glinda--eases the emotional peaks and troughs she goes through in the song, and grounds them in something very recognizable. i've never been arrested for abetting a terrorist and impressed into becoming a facist regime's figurehead, but i HAVE worked at jobs where i have to perform a heightened version of myself and always be on. that Glinda is doing this at such a horrifying scale highlights how insidious and banal becoming complicit in authoritarianism can be, but the scope doesn't change the very mundane core of it. Glinda is working. she's very good at her job. it's the job she always wanted to have, and she might love it even now, but it's a job. it's work. she's allowed to have ambivalent feelings about it and she's allowed to find it draining...

so long as she gets over it before anyone sees. that IS her job.

[theseerasures]

i'd planned to dive straight in for Act Two (almost like a real liveblog!) but less than a minute into Thank Goodness and my thoughts have already spooled toward infinity, so. here are some prefatory notes to help myself organize the incoming mess:

Thank Goodness is my favorite song in Wicked. this should make everyone feel very bad for it, because anything i consider "a fave" is doomed to ceaseless critique. when i see the number done well it's the highlight of the show and makes me feel hitherto unknown emotions, but i also almost never think Thank Goodness is done well. part of this absolutely has to do with my unreasonable idiosyncratic demands, but a not-insignificant portion stems from Thank Goodness being the most finicky song in Wicked.

even now i have a better sense of what makes Thank Goodness fail than what makes it succeed. this particular TG succeeds, but i have trouble pinpointing why--okay, that's not entirely true. one major reason this performance succeeds is Katie Rose Clarke, who is the best most consistent Thank Goodness performer. that's not actually helpful feedback tho, because the years have hammered in how trying to Do It Like Katie is a) so much work, and b) not actually possible.

so instead i'm going to treat this TG like a positive working example--reverse engineering the interesting moments to see what broad theoretical ideas (if any) make a Thank Goodness good.

...and by "interesting moments" i mean "all of them. all the moments." this is gonna take a minute, strap in

[theseerasures]

when people talk about Wicked's themes what gets most commonly brought up is the classic "ignorance breeds hatred" thing. you know: the people of Oz call Elphaba wicked because she's strange and they don't know her and it's very lamentable because if they'd just taken the time to understand her life and feelings they wouldn't have been such persecuting cunts

which is certainly true, and it's a reading encouraged both by the show's metatextual relationship with Wizard of Oz and the way Glinda frames the story. the versions of Wicked that really resonate with me, though, are the ones that complicate the relationship between understanding and respect. the best Gelphies to my mind don't know each other very well, even by the end. in fact, what makes the relationship so tragic is how they assume that because they love each other they must have reached some kind of total understanding and agreement. but that's...just not how it works. understanding isn't something you can take for granted because you've attained love, and love doesn't automatically follow once you have understanding. they are interdependent, but ultimately separate, choices, and expanding this idea outward offers a more pessimistic but truer takeaway on how the world works. ignorance isn't the only reason for discrimination, and knowledge doesn't automatically lead to tolerance.

it's not a total bummer either, because the fact Gelphie never achieve complete understanding or agreement doesn't undermine the love they have for each other, or how much they changed because of that love. Gelphie is a tragedy because they could have worked in tandem and come to terms if only circumstances had been different, but Gelphie also defies that same tragedy because they loved each other all the while, circumstances be damned. that's something THEY chose, and kept choosing.

it almost feels like a dare. what if you couldn't identify with the monster? could you love her anyway?

[theseerasures]

fellas is it gay to sob in unison with your bestie as you clutch desperately at each other while saying goodbye

[theseerasures]

this whole sequence is eight bars (the first two of which have no vocals) but somehow contains enough meaning and emotion to fill a seven layer dip

Katie's Glinda always looks at Laurel's Elphaba with such ambivalence whenever Elphaba isn't paying attention. it started all the way during Room Assignments after Elphaba's magical outburst. there's curiosity and wonder, but there's also caution; even now there is caution. she can't understand Elphaba, which is scary. she loves Elphaba despite--or even because--not understanding her, which is even scarier.

but Elphaba catches her looking, just as she had during Popular. back then Galinda had been able to transform her wariness into awe: why, Miss Elphaba, look at you. but too much has happened, and she is too overwhelmed, to do the same thing here.

the only thing she can muster is a headshake. a denial. earlier she'd told Elphaba: don't be afraid. now she says i'm not afraid. not of you. it's a lie, but it's the lie Elphaba has needed to hear all her life--that she is not frightening.

and she's Glinda now so obviously Katie has to hit herself and rip her cuticles to shreds

Laurel!Elphaba's little faltering half step backwards as Glinda starts singing is just like. some part of her really believed they would be leaving together! that's how strong her belief in Glinda was. she'd let Glinda dither by putting on the cloak, and you get the sense that she would have stayed for as long as Glinda kept arguing with her, because she could keep arguing back and then Glinda would finally be convinced

but Glinda isn't arguing anymore. she's already convinced, so she shakes her head again. Glinda has decided this fight is over, and she will have the last word. i'm not coming. you can't talk me into this. she can't bear to say it out loud, but Elphaba is at least owed a gesture. a refusal.

which Elphaba accepts with gentle grace: you too. Glinda's decision is one she can neither understand nor abide, but in this moment she is so concerned for her best and only friend she wishes, fleetingly and irrationally, that she could be wrong and Glinda right. anything, really, to wipe the shame and misery from Glinda's face.

and to this extension of care Glinda can only shake her head for a third. a refusal; a denial. Elphaba shouldn't have to worry about her right now. if Elphaba needs to leave--and she does--then Glinda won't be the anchor dragging her down. it's the least she can do. it's the ONLY thing she can do. don't worry about me, Elphaba; i'll be fine. safe journey.

a denial; a refusal. i hope it brings you bliss, Elphaba offers, loving Glinda so much she's willing to bend her own sense of right and wrong. Glinda shakes her head, loving Elphaba too much in turn to accept this concession. she won't win this fight if this is where it leaves them. what are you talking about? you're leaving me. i'm letting you go. i won't be happy again; not like i was with you.

[theseerasures]

kudos to Laurel Harris for actually trembling when Glinda says "you're trembling"

like i don't think it should be a requirement or anything; the way most Glindas--Katie included--read that line it's clear they're just scrambling to say anything that would avoid having to give Elphie a flat out "no." still nice to see sometimes anyway

[theseerasures]

i guess it really is an Ozdust reprise bc once again i can't think of a way to talk about this sequence except to walk through bit by bit

but no really: i think the most easily coherent way to bring out the tragedy of this scene is to highlight how Gelphie took away fundamentally different lessons from the Ozdust, and it just never came to light until now

for Elphaba it truly is that she was changed for good, despite the Ozdust happening while we're only a third into the show. even the least jaded Elphabas come in pretty convinced that no one will ever accept her, but then Galinda just...makes it happen during a 45 second dance break. it's why she's willing to hear Galinda out during Popular--Galinda's way WORKS, even if it only works for Galinda. it's why the pronoun changes during the unlimited motif here; Elphaba really believes that she and Glinda can change the world together. to her perspective, they already have.

but--as Katie's overwhelmed/incredulous expression shows--that's not what happened for Glinda at ALL. what happened at the Ozdust, for Glinda, is that she had done a Bad Thing. this made another person feel awful; equally importantly, it had made GALINDA feel awful, so she had to fix it even though it was maybe the most terrifying thing she'd ever done. she's glad she did it because it made her a better person and she and Elphie are friends now, but she never wants to do that again. the reason it's so important to teach Elphaba about Popular is so they can avoid anything like it in the future. the idea that they could do a bigger, scarier version of the Ozdust here, then, is completely unfathomable. the only reason the Ozdust worked out the way it did is because everyone loved Galinda already at Shiz, but Glinda, here? the Wizard doesn't know Glinda. Madame Morrible certainly doesn't love Glinda. Fiyero might not even love Glinda, anymore. Glinda can't possibly help Elphaba change the world.

...and Glinda doesn't want the world to change. she's good at this world, right now; that's why she could bring Elphie back into the fold at school. she might even be able to do it again, here, but if Elphaba doesn't want that--if the only thing Elphaba wants is this...

the crazy thing is she almost gives in anyway. the script says she has to, obviously, but what comes across for this particular performance is Glinda almost gets on the broom for no other reason except that Elphaba is the one asking. the moment when Glinda steels herself before grabbing the broom is the same moment earlier when Glinda steeled herself before saying "don't be afraid" is the same moment later when Glinda will steel herself before bidding Elphaba goodbye. it all comes down to this: Elphie needs her. in the face of something so simple, what can Glinda do, except everything she can?

so the duet portion of this sequence is just. Elphaba's all Glinda i believe in you more than anything else in the world, you might not think you can do this but you absolutely can you can do anything. and Glinda's like Elphie i cannot follow any of your cognitive leaps and when i do they seem like the scariest most horrible things in the world, but if this is what you want i will try to help you bc you deserve everything and i believe in you even when i think you are concussed somehow. then Elphaba's like i know this dream we both want seems impossible but we can achieve it if we work together while Glinda's going i cannot fathom why literally anyone would want what you want but you seem very convinced so and you'd think at this point they'd be like what? and realize they're having two completely different conversations but instead they're so stupid with the love beaming out of their bodies it seems it might actually work out

but of course it doesn't. the script says so, and this is Katie's Glinda, so of course the bitch has to start thinking.

and it's funny. "Glinda doesn't get on the broom because she's scared" is one of the most common readings of this moment for pretty obvious reasons. "Glinda doesn't get on the broom because she's scared of Elphaba" is much rarer and, when done well, stands out a lot more; the example that comes most to mind is Alison Luff and Gina Beck, where Alison's Elphaba is so outraged by what she reads as Gina!Glinda's betrayal that it feels pretty justifiable that Glinda fears for her own safety.

then you have Katie here, who is not doing either of those but some secret third thing. that she looks at Elphaba before flinching away from the broom (btw thank you Laurel Harris for putting your hands over Katie's; my wife and i now hiss "trap her. trap her u coward" during this scene because of you) implies that was what spooked her, but it's hard for me to buy she's scared Elphaba might hurt her, because a) Laurel's Elphaba is the most pathetic of meow meows and b) Katie's Glinda, despite being a massive coward, somehow also has no sense of self-preservation

instead it feels...almost metaphysical? back in One Short Day Glinda had been cognizant of something happening between them, which she couldn't identify but Elphie could. back then she'd asked for time to figure it out; now there's no time and she's cottoned onto just how overpowering her instinct to do literally anything with Elphaba, for Elphaba, has become. it's one thing to have misgivings about Elphaba's vision for the future because it's ridiculous (and because there might not be a place for Glinda there), but it's another thing to realize that none of those misgivings matter for Glinda herself, because some part of Glinda loves Elphaba so much she was about to atomize her own wants and identity without thinking twice.

which might be the scariest thing of all for Glinda--all Glindas, even if they don't think through it as much.

they'll never bring us down, promises Elphaba, but she's not even looking at Glinda anymore. where Elphaba sees a flight into the sublime, Glinda can only see a fall into nothingness.

[theseerasures]

ah yes the face of the revolution

[theseerasures]

Laurel's fucking face journey ruins me here, like

it almost feels like a dramatic reprise of the Ozdust?? she starts out so utterly betrayed when Glinda first floats the "apologize to everyone" idea because no matter what she had been accusing Glinda of just minutes ago some part of her still believes Glinda is in her corner

and then her expression transforming as it turns out Glinda absolutely is. Glinda is trying to keep Elphaba alive, Glinda still wants Elphaba to succeed and get everything she wanted. the vulnerable hurt transforming into this equally vulnerable fondness; because it can't be Glinda's fault she doesn't know Elphaba's priorities have shifted, right? Elphaba never bothered to explain herself. so once she does--

[theseerasures]

Laurel's Elphaba is such a weakass bitch she goes from screaming in Glinda's face to being like "Gwinda :( Gwinda why is Madame Morrible being so mean :( Gwinda my feelings hurt :(" in the span of a single minute

[theseerasures]

one of my favorite things about Katie's Glinda--something which gives her that unique texture--is like. yes, she is among the most kindhearted Glindas, but at the same time she has literally never backed down from a fight and has no plans to do so ever in her life

like sure she physically backs away from Elphaba in this scene because the stage directions don't give her much choice, but even as she's backing away every pore of her body oozes wounded indignation. and the moment Katie hits her mark she gets right in Elphaba's face again and just keeps on escalating until ELPHABA has to back away a little because Glinda was??? about to bite her maybe???

or they were gonna start making out; can't have that either

it's a very different flavor from Kendra's unchecked bellicosity; Katie's Glinda doesn't like to start fights and she really does want everyone to get along and be as happy as she is. and it's not like she refuses to acknowledge she's wrong! but she can only do it after the fact, because once she gets sucked into a confrontation this girl just. has no flight response. she doesn't only do it when things are really serious like they are here, either: you can see it as early as WITF. every time Elphaba makes an aggressive gesture Galinda either matches or tries to beat it, and even the way Katie closes the number (which has not changed in 12 years)--turning back to Elphaba on the beat being all "what's wrong with you >:("--feeds into this obsession with getting the last word.

i haven't really seen it discussed but imo this characterization choice plays a significant role in how Katie's Glinda conducts herself, especially once we get to Act Two

[theseerasures]

(left: November 2008; right: March 2019)

when i try to explain why Katie's Glinda is so special my default words tend to be "weird," or "alien," or "fucking look at her. just fucking--why is she LIKE this." of course i stand by all that, but if i were to doff my facile and irreverent hat at last i'd probably say something like: Katie's Glinda, to me, represents a kind of artistic transgression which can never be fully captured by the institution of Wicked. she might as well be Frank fucking Abagnale given how hard the show has tried, alternately banning or legitimizing what she's done; this kind of granular approach, though, is never going to work. like--yes, it was the individual gestures and line reads which got her in trouble (according to her. it's possible Joe Mantello did a frown in her direction once), but in isolation those things mean very little. the whole of Katie's performance, which drives and always exceeds the sum of its parts, comes down to how Glinda is simultaneously the woman behind the curtain, and the curtain itself. Glinda is shallow artifice at the same time Glinda is complex depth. it's all truth; it's all real.

(it's all lies; it's all pretend. how could it not be? she's the one telling the story. she's the only one here.)

over and over Katie's Glinda feels sharply and just as sharply rejects the feeling; papers over it, squares it away. the Wizard's chamber scene in 2008 is one of her starkest approaches to this. Glinda knows exactly what is happening. what's more--Glinda knows better. (Katie has never allowed Glinda the grace of not knowing, or not knowing better.) she has a strong enough moral compass to react to the Wizard's offer with revulsion and horror, almost as if she were...oh, eighteen years old and intimately discovering she lives in a fascist regime built on a mountain of subaltern corpses. but she only shows it once the Wizard has finally turned away from her and even then, only for an instant. once she catches sight of Elphaba she wrenches herself into damage control mode, and the most important thing, the ONLY important thing, becomes getting them both out of here no matter the collateral.

Glinda in the same scene in 2019 is...pretty different! any disgust or moral conflict is completely wiped, and if Glinda has any feelings pertaining to what just happened it's relief and delight that they can get back on track after all that unpleasantness. even the reach for Elphaba at the end has changed in tone: now she's more authoritative--maybe even a little impatient--for Elphie to get with the program.

on the one hand it's like: okay, well, Katie's Glinda is normal now. she's the MOST normal Broadway Glinda during this period, and this is the typical way for Glindas to behave during this scene. even weirder, more conscientious Glindas aren't as bold about showing their moral quandaries as Katie's Glinda was in 2008, so we can read this as part of 2019 Glinda's overall deal, which is that she is very normal and her actress is very thankful she was invited back to make Wicked levels of money.

on the other: said actress is 👏🏼KATIE👏🏼ROSE👏🏼CLARKE, who has taken to straight up telling her directors she's never going to do the same thing night-to-night. so obviously she couldn't even swan through her (hopefully lucrative) Wicked victory lap without turning yet again into some bizarre outlier. part of this was done by digging Normal Galinda up from her shallow grave, but the other, larger part comes from what has stayed the same. because Katie's Glinda in 2019 remains, at her core, Katie's Glinda. she's the same person from 2008. still sensitive, still trusting, still smart in a way which only brings her grief, because once again Katie is not interested in letting Glinda off that particular hook. still autistic and gay as hell. 2019 Glinda is better at masking; maybe because she learned earlier that her preternatural charisma can only get her so far, and sometimes you HAVE to conform. 2019 Glinda comes from a more cynical world, even before she came to Shiz, which makes her more suited to accept the cynicism to come.

but not more suited to actually live in it, because the significant adjustments to 2019 Galinda's behavior become kinda irrelevant right around the time she changes her name. technically this is something we already know: from the moment she descends in the bubble in NOMTW, 2019 Glinda is just as miserable as she had been in 2008. (Act Two demonstrates that if anything 2019 Glinda might be even MORE miserable, but we'll get there when we get there.) and she's not even really better at hiding it! if Normal Glinda is emotionally devastated in the exact same way as Space Alien Glinda at the end of it all, then why change so much of the lead up? what does it even matter?

well. it's Glinda, so (appropriately) it matters because it's the way you're viewed. while we're inside the Wizard's chamber it matters, which is why even 2008 Glinda tries very hard to at least pretend she's onboard with all the scandalacious villainy. and outside of the Wizard's chamber--in Glinda's present, as she tells the story to her real and fictional audience--it matters, because it tells us how to feel about Glinda, and how Glinda feels about Glinda.

in 2008 Glinda beseeches empathy. the visceral sharpness of her body language and facial expression feels like an implicit interjection from Glinda the narrator: she was so scared. what else could she have done? what could you have done, had you been this scared? but in 2019 the same moment--with almost entirely the same Glinda, doing almost entirely the same motions--is treated so unsparingly it borders on self-abuse. Glinda in 2019, looking back on what happened, recounting it; alternately framing, hiding, and exposing her past self; within and between texts, says: who cares what she felt? who cares what she believed? this is what she DID. and look how good she is at it! if she had been pretending she's only getting what she wanted. this is what everyone saw. this is the only truth anyone should know. how in Oz can her feelings matter in the face of all she has done? all the harm she's dealt? all the people she's abandoned? all the bodies left in her wake?

how could anyone forgive her?

[theseerasures]

me: now that i've finished that periodization writeup maybe i'll go back to talking about Laurel/Katie/Ryan Wicked. it's been a minute, wonder where i left off-- my computer:

me: me: ah,

[theseerasures]

A Theory on the Periodization of Wicked: Part Four

ANOTHER CAVEAT

i have, at time of writing, not yet seen the newest Broadway company of Wicked helmed by Lencia Kebede and Allie Trimm. all my comments below are therefore only applicable to before they took over.

SEPT 2021 (Broadway Reopening) - PRESENT: POST-COVID

i'm just gonna assume i don't need to explain the significance of COVID here. you'd expect such an epochal event--one which uniquely impacted theatre--to offer an incontrovertible date for this period's beginning, but there's actually quite a bit of wiggle room because cast changeover was almost nonexistent between pre- and post-pandemic. the majority of Ginna Claire Mason's tenure on Broadway was pre-shutdown, to say nothing of the entirety of her career as Glinda. this is not true of her final Elphie Lindsay Heather Pearce, so one could argue this period really started on February 2022 when Brittney Johnson took over. but that opens the door too much imo for other later edge cases like Talia Suskauer, Alyssa Fox, Mary Kate Morrissey, and even Brittney herself; she had been IN Wicked since 2018, after all. so fuck it: other actors have left and come back to the show across period shifts before, and i'd never considered them exceptions.

which is probably the most intellectually honest way to think about Wicked coming back: that the entire cast left in March 2020, and (with the exception of Shoba Narayan) all just happened to come back at around the same time in September 2021. because much as the show promised this triumphant constancy--things being as they were--everything was different. returning actors were coming out of lockdown with no idea how to behave and having to do their jobs where they pretend to be other people who also don't know how to behave (but in a cool, scripted way); they were doing this for an audience which had no idea how to behave, and especially had forgotten how to behave in a theater. for Wicked specifically there was the movie, which finally seemed to be happening. the show was already taking flak for stagnation in the previous era, and now changing with the times felt more necessary than ever.

to Wicked's credit, it made some changes. no more direct pipeline from tour to Broadway--or at least a much less predictable one. an influx of Elphabas and Glindas who have never done the role (though never at the same time), and a particularly radical expansion in casting BIPOC and out queer folks as principals. in short order we got Brittney Johnson (first Black principal Glinda), Jordan Barrow (first Black Boq), Kimber Elayne Sprawl (first Black Nessa), Mary Kate Morrissey (first out queer Elphaba), Austen Danielle Bohmer (first out lesbian Glinda), and most recently Lencia Kebede (first Black principal Elphaba) and Jenna Bainbridge (first wheelchair user Nessa). these decisions garnered a great many exultant cries, many of which sounded like "jesus christ how did it take you THIS LONG," but hey! better late than never. incoming cast members both new and old were tacitly encouraged to innovate and really make their mark on these now iconique characters. all of this was clearly meant to foster a new period of flowering creativity for Wicked...

...

yeah, so there's a major issue with this all new all different all transgressive Wicked. in the plainest terms possible: you can't actually make transgression the norm.

from a theoretical standpoint, there has to BE a norm first for it to be transgressed. there's no practical reason to pine for the days when after every Popular every Glinda thought they were going to be fired and National Treasure Eden Espinosa was condemned to the Chateau D'If for doing too zesty a riff during TWAI, but they demonstrate the underlying point here, which is transgression isn't just doing something new. there's a unique thrill to doing something that isn't allowed. (it's a thrill live theatre is very suited to evoke, because live theatre is all about the tension between the rigidity of a scripted narrative and the idea that anything can happen when it's live.) we saw how limitation could shepherd creativity with the previous era's Glindas, who one way or another felt compelled to perform a lot of specific actions but built distinctive identities around those things anyway. a Wicked in which each actor can just perform as the spirit moves them sounds inventive and exciting but would, in actuality, be a hot mess.

it'd be a fun mess to talk about tho! but that's not what we got, because Wicked was obviously NOT going to throw out the entire rulebook when rules were what made it such an August Broadway Institution in the first place. last era it tried to balance Wicked-as-stable-marketable-product and Wicked-as-evolving-art by normalizing some previously transgressive elements. this time they brought in fresh blood, encouraged them to change things, loosened all these silly rules...except they didn't actually do that last part. the Eden Riff in TWAI experienced a few brief years of freedom before being once again outlawed, and the list of items either required or banned hasn't shortened at all. rather than lifting the restrictions, Wicked just moved the furniture a little bit. and while i'm sure there was sincere intent (perhaps even effort) behind encouraging incoming performers to shake things up, encouragement doesn't count for much when it only comes after a three day lecture on the importance of Wicked and preserving the show's legacy.

and the new incoming casts, which on paper feels like the perfect complement for new ideas, only ended up working against the show changing very much. recall that during the newborn stage of Wicked 2.0 just about every Gelphie performing had already done it before, a feat all the more impressive back then because there were FOUR separate Wickeds and the show was less than five years old. there were some (notable) exceptions, but on the whole Wicked 2.0 was helmed onstage by people who knew what had changed, and what could change. this time people were told "do whatever!" when they were still learning the show and its accumulated five billion layers of red tape. and if you're the first of a marginalized community to perform a role...that just compounds the pressure, doesn't it? good job being exemplary and exceptional outside the text! hope you weren't expecting to give solid-but-conventional performances like your more privileged peers tho, because now we're counting on you to change everything (but not too much! just the regulation amount).

it's tempting at this point to attribute Wicked's increasing over-legislation to a really good enemy; like, i wanna say this is all the fault of Joe Mantello or corporate interests or algorithms, except...well, just compare interviews done for the 20th anniversary with similar ones from the 10th. they were alternately cocky and reflective in the latter, but there was a degree of irreverence then that is almost completely absent in the former, which is all about the history and the legacy and the Importance. everyone doing the show nowadays is or has to perform being really REALLY into Wicked, like it's some kind of sacred artifact, and of course that's going to color the production itself. incoming actors might have never performed the role before, but they will have been steeped in The Wicked for decades through cultural osmosis if nothing else. the baggage of Wicked--its impact, its longevity, collective appraisals on what worked and what didn't--will increasingly dwarf the individual people who make the show happen, which means those people will, by and large, grow increasingly self-conscious and conservative in their own contributions to the show.

the Elphabas seem to have adjusted better to these shifts. i instinctively wanna say it's because Elphabas on the whole are coming in with more prior experience, but that would be doing folks like Lindsay Heather Pearce, Lissa deGuzman and Lauren Samuels a disservice. maybe they're more used to it since Broadway Elphabas were already so heavily scrutinized in the previous period, or maybe they're reacting against the indistinct constraint of those predecessors, but each Elphie has been bringing something coherently unique to the role. a Lindsay Elphie is markedly different from a Talia Elphie is markedly different from an Alyssa is markedly different from an MK, etc etc. they're not unaffected by the uptick in bureaucracy and shifting standards--hitting the INTG E3 is? optional now? maybe? and every Fiyero riff is basically the same--but they've been able to finesse compelling acting choices regardless, either within the restrictions or just by being naughty.

with the Glindas...i'm not sure what happened. we had a phenomenal start with Brittney who, by resuscitating some of the character's earlier elements and dynamically adding onto them with her own take, has a strong claim to being the most influential Glinda of this period. all her successors on tour and at the Gershwin, though, seemed to have a tough time carving out their own identity in the role, maybe BECAUSE they get so in their heads about how to make the part "their own." so what we get is this vacillation between being extremely referential and overthinking every possible new idea they have, all the while anxiously anticipating SOME kind of immediate feedback, be it positive (in the form of a pleased audience) or negative (via a slap on the wrist from management or a quiet house). there's very little to these Glindas outside of desperately trying to give people what they want, which a) makes for a very inconsistent character, and b) feels especially at odds with GLINDA, who is supposed to be so charismatic we let her decide what is good and what we want, for us.

nowadays Glinda might as well feel like an entirely separate person in each of her scenes, and at no time in the show does it become more obvious than during Thank Goodness. there was a little of this last period too, with Jenni Barber and Amanda Jane Cooper, but a confounding number of contemporary Glindas have pinned their hopes on Thank Goodness to be the showstopping lynchpin to cohere their characterizations. rationally it makes sense: Glinda has increasingly become a dramatic character and there are more and more Glinda actresses who clearly think Glinda is tragic and so sad u guys, so Thank Goodness gets bumped up in the priority list of things to Get Right. on an emotional level i empathize and i...THINK i respect the hustle? but that doesn't change the fact that Act Two Glinda is and always will be harder to pull off than her Act One counterpart, and focusing on her Saddest Song (tm) at the cost of all else weakens, not strengthens, Act Two Glinda, to say nothing of Glinda and Wicked as a whole. there's no foundation to this very weepy house you're trying to build, so Thank Goodness just becomes another version of Glinda unmoored from everything else.

am i being too harsh? probably! so i'll say on the whole i still enjoy this era of Wicked more than the very early days of the show, in Wicked 1.0. the highs are higher and the lows aren't as low, because the show's identity and the direction of its principal characters don't feel as precarious. and i'll reiterate that i truly do not think there has been some drastic decrease in the talent and care put into Wicked. everyone involved with the show currently is either here for it or VERY good at pretending they are. in a way that's what's so frustrating about this era, and why i decided to do this project in the first place: the academic in me knows expecting perpetual growth and progress is capitalist and heteronormative, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it anyway. i want the Wicked of today to be the gayest best it's ever been, and only getting better, because it's how my brain has been wired, and because precious few other things feel like they're trending in that direction right now. but that's just not how things go, and trapping myself in the same mindset as Wicked's creatives--always demanding instant palpable changes for the better--isn't going to improve either the show or my enjoyment of it.

[theseerasures]

A Theory on the Periodization of Wicked: Part Three

OCT 2013 (10th Anniversary) - MAR 2020 (Broadway Shutdown): WICKED TM

this is where date cutoffs start getting hazy. depending on the metric, you could argue this era starts later in February 2014 (the ascension of Jenni Barber, the first Glinda on Broadway to have never performed the role), December 2014 (Jenni's departure), or March 2015 (the closing of 1NT leaving only two Wickeds running in the US for the first time in a decade). i ended up going with the 10th Anniversary because a) it's a milestone acknowledged by the show itself, and b) after the anniversary there was a palpable shift in Wicked's Standard Operating Procedure. with the sunsetting of 1NT in favor of 2NT, which has more flexible (and coincidentally cheaper) staging and could fit in a greater number of regional theaters, the show was increasingly emphasizing its mass market appeal. of course Wicked was always meant to be For Everyone, but the success of Fly Girl (which wasn't Wicked's first ever vlog, but Andy Karl's Oz Blog in 2010 had at most 24K views to Fly Girl's 1.6M) led to a proliferation of similar backstage promotional content designed to show off both Wicked's theatre magic and the fun relatability of its main cast.

this was also a period of on- and offstage streamlining for Wicked, likely to guarantee a more consistent product for the expected broader audience. or, to put it more bluntly: Wicked tended to play it pretty safe during this time. this was most evident in the Broadway casting, where with the exception of Jenni Barber at the beginning and Hannah Corneau at the end every Gelphie consisted of someone who had done it before. in fact, every Broadway Glinda besides Jenni during this period was either a returning Broadway alum, or someone who had been funneled toward Broadway as soon as their contract on tour ended. on one hand this kind of internal elevation is nothing new; the previous era was filled with alums hopping from one production to another. on the other the winnowing of productions down to just Broadway and 2NT brought the practice into sharper focus, particularly with the talent now pretty much going in one direction. there were exceptions among the supporting cast, like Sheryl Lee Ralph and Alexandra Billings, but the runaway success of these unprecedented performances only served to highlight how insular and stagnant casting was getting otherwise.

then there were the performances themselves, which--you know what, let's actually start with the Glindas this time, because as usual the shifts in Glindas are more easily palpable. this period is when Katie Rose Clarke's influence as Glinda becomes...pretty much impossible to deny. there are of course the gestures she either pioneered or codified, which all her successors now either exactly perform or try to approximate. i don't think ALL of these are mandates from on high, mostly because that sounds like a psychotic degree of micromanagement. but even if none of the Katie Things are actually required, and all these Glindas do them just because They Think She's Neat, it still underscores how much of a centralizing presence Katie's interpretation of Glinda has become. she is still the Glinda Who Would Not Leave, even after she finally literally left.

and there was at least some level of acknowledgement of this from the higher ups, because it seems like they were increasingly choosing Glindas--across both Broadway and National Tour(s)--based on their capacity as dramatic actors, rather than comediennes or sopranos. casting belters as Glindas obviously stretches as far back as Hilty, and none of the Glindas during this time were bad singers, or incapable of consistently hitting those B5s and C6s. however, i do find it somewhat telling this is the first period during which (afaik at least) no Glindas were doing opt ups, either because they were told not to by the constantly shifting morass of rules dictating what was and wasn't legal, or just because that wasn't where their ambitions as Glinda lay. even when they weren't singing Glindas were delivering their lines closer to their natural speaking register, presumably because they preferred the emotional nuance that provided over sounding cartoonishly entertaining. they still WERE entertaining, but the ways in which they coaxed laughs and reactions out of the audience relied more on offbeat relatability and unique rapport with their specific Elphies.

you'd think drawing from the same Sad Weird Gay well for their Glindas would make these actresses blandly indistinguishable, but that wasn't the case. each Glinda during this time was passionate enough about their role to have a unique approach to their character, emphasizing what they felt was most important from the baseline. bi by and large they also had the acting chops to follow through, which is...not something i can say about most of their Elphie counterparts on Broadway. Elphabas weren't promoted out of the tour as linearly as the Glindas, and i suspect the reason is they prioritized an Elphie's ability to bring the house down vocally above all else when casting for Broadway. none of them were downright bad as actors, but their interpretations of Elphaba were mostly just...generically passionate, in line with the highkey emotion of their solo numbers.

which stands in stark contrast with a lot of the Elphies on tour, who had comparatively weaker voices but were asking much more interesting questions through their acting. Laurel Harris, for example, asked "what if Elphaba was just. calamitously bisexual?" Alyssa Fox, on the other hand, asked "what if Elphaba was just. calamitously bisexual, but she didn't use a blunderbuss to apply eyeliner?" and of course there was Mary Kate Morrissey, who asked "what if Elphaba was just. calamitously b--well not bisexual at all, but that doesn't mean she wants Fiyero to feel left out, okay?" all three of these Elphies would make it onto Broadway to some extent, but Alyssa and MK had to wait until after this period was over, and Laurel never became principal. Jess Vosk was the strongest exception, because literally nobody on earth would accuse her of having a weak voice; she was Elphaba who very much had a distinctive personality on tour, which only got more distinctive (read: feral) after they let her on Broadway soon after she completed her initial contract. she could hashtag do both. obviously all Elphabas SHOULD, but when given the choice between a stronger actor needing to develop her voice or a vocal powerhouse with limited acting range, the decisionmakers were opting for the latter.

which i guess makes sense: Elphaba is the face of Wicked, and Wicked was, increasinlgly, no longer just a wildly successful musical but a stable cultural institution.

[theseerasures]

You wrote that while Wicked 2.0 is a stronger show than Wicked 1.0 as a whole, there are some aspects of Wicked 1.0 that you miss. What are they? What details would you like to see brought back from the musical's pre-2007 era?

to me these are two slightly different questions. i miss a lot more of Wicked 1.0 than i would actually want to bring back, because a) i mostly miss them on the grounds that they are a bygone novelty, and b) many things they cut they cut because they only fit Wicked the show back then, as opposed to now. the one thing i can think of that i would want back with no qualifications is Fiyero saying "fortunately i'm up to the task" before launching into Dancing Through Life; it's just one additional unobtrusive line, and i like how it adds a little breathing room to his introductory scene.

on the flip side there are quite a few things i miss but don't want to bring back. the most prominent example is the Wizard-Elphie waltz at the end of Wonderful. it goes a long way to demonstrate the Wizard's charisma and justify WHY he was able to take power in the first place and it's a lot of fun, but every time i actually watch Wicked 1.0 Wonderful i age 15 years waiting for it to be over. the Wizard is just not what we're here to see, so the only way i'd want Wicked 1.0 Wonderful to return is like. if it's either the Wizard or the Elphie's last show and THEY want to do it as a fun special thing--then it's mostly about the actors, and even if the scene falls flat it's still special bc you'll...well i almost "never see this particular pair again," but Wicked casts are a perpetual revolving door so whom known

there are other things of a similar vein--@professorspork tends to want them preserved more than i do--which either just fit better in the old show, or sacrifice the pacing way too much