Tuesday 2 September 2008

Wicked by Gregory Maguire


I purchased this almost three years ago in a bookshop browsing session in Barnes & Noble on New York's Fifth Avenue. As I recall I spent about two hours browsing there, had a drink and a slice of cake and then wandered down to Central Park. It was a warm day at the end of October and I was spending a couple of days alone in New York following some time in Florida with a Disney employed friend. Wicked the musical had just opened on Broadway and had a tremendous buzz about it. Try as I might, I couldn't get a single return without paying touts prices and when I saw that familiar image on a book, I thought it was the next best thing. I also bought The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. At that snapshot point in time, my possibly somewhat naive impression was that these three books seemed to sum up the mainstream cultural zeitgeist. I read The Notebook on the flight home, and The Tipping Point over the next couple of weeks. Wicked had stayed by my bed for the last three years gathering dust.

Following the successful transfer of the musical version to the West End, I booked tickets and aimed to read the novel before I got to see the performance. I was glad I had done so, as there are many differences between the two.



Wicked is a prequel and in the latter stages parallel novel to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I found the novel hard to get into, with the opening lacking some sense of pace and possibly due to the lack of a protagonist at the very beginning, indeed the novel takes us back to Elphaba's birth and the reader is not made to empathise with any of the other characters, so until we encounter adult Elphie, it leave us a little bereft. The premise is a good one and, like all good fairytales, it is dark and almost gothic in places. The character of Elphaba is particularly well conveyed and the intimacy in her adult relationship with Fiyero is very real. It is very definitely an adults book , a great read once the pace picks up, and it's intertextuality with the Wizard of Oz is endlessly satisfying.

The set prior to performance

The musical version strays somewhat from the plot lines set out by Maguire, although it is clear that in order to become family entertainment, it would have to be a little different - the scene in the club - need I continue? The focus of the story is on the development of the characters of Glinda, Elphaba and their friendship and less on the ethical struggle between good, bad and the grey areas in between.The staging of this production is no doubt incredibly expensive, but it is a triumph in theatrical design and spectacle. There is some stunning orchestration and the climax to the first Act 'Defying Gravity' is a perfect piece of theatre, which left me choked, and made the Act Two an anti-climax to an extent. Having read the novel I felt cheated by the 'Disney-fied' ending to the musical, but really that can be my only true complaint.

I'm not sure that I'll read more Maguire - I feel satisfied with this one, but it does come recommended.

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