A word on Wicked - because everyone loves reading complaints about how they got the book wrong.

[petra_quince]

After a longish spell of reading Serious Literary Fiction, and a bit stressed for unrelated reasons and in the mood for some undemanding, entertaining genre stuff, I picked up Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Personal background: as a kid I adored all things Oz. I read all the Baum books, watched the movies umpteen times, wrote an ill-informed research

Comments

[lillibet]

Yeah--I had the never-fun experience of having the book pressed upon me by a good friend as the Best Thing and hating it. I haven't seen the musical and while I've been told its quite different, that hasn't made me want to see it.

[muffyjo]

I've never read the book and keep thinking I probably should. The musical is an interesting play on the genre, combining the narcism inherent in musicals with the darkness of self-realization. "No Good Deed" is perhaps a better song to think about from it. "Popular" is about the plastic side of life that is set up for Elphaba to reject. The joke is on the watchers, in the play, in that it starts where Dorothy kills Elphaba. It goes on to reflect on how people don't start wicked, they are normal. Glinda spends a great deal of time trying to educate folks and find true sympathy only to realize that she is stuck in a fascist world in a position of power. It's only the audience, Elphaba and Glinda who come away understanding the weight of the stupidity of Oz.

I am a fan. It's a good play and has some interesting twists along the way. Worth seeing at least once, in my opinion. Although I have to admit, I'm curious what they will put in the movie next year.

[chanaleh]

Conversely: I did not enjoy Wicked-the-book very much, but I did read it only after seeing the musical.

And I hold up the musical as one of my top two examples of adaptations that, in adding stuff to a book source, thereby made it better, by my definition of dramatic arc etc. (My other is The Secret Garden, which book is certainly classic and pleasant to read, but lacks the driving narrative force and symbolic resonance that Marsha Norman found for it.)

You are, of course, entitled to be horrified by it, but as the musical stands, it's pretty great.

(And I too inhaled all the Oz books growing up.)