Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

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A lot has happened before Dorothy dropped in. A child born green and with sharp teeth grows into adolescence and attends the prestigious Shiz University where she is roomed with Galinda, a blonde social climber who has lofty ambitions. Elphaba couldn’t care less about social standing and preoccupies herself mostly with concerns that have socio-political relevance. Take for example the recent edict from the wizard stripping Animals of their rights to function in society, a cause that Goat professor Doctor Dillamond is passionate about. The untimely death of Galinda’s chaperone means the arrival of Elphie’s nanny as replacement, and along comes Elphaba’s armless sister Nessarose. New student Fiyero, an Arjiki prince, also arrives, and a friendship is formed among the group. However, Elphaba will soon learn that she will be better off as an agent of change outside the university, and so she drops out and takes her chances as an antigovernmental rebel.

It is some sort of consensus that if you see the musical before reading the book, you won’t like the book. If you read the novel first before watching the Broadway show, you’ll find the musical lacking. A comment on Reddit summarizes it well to the tune of: “The musical is a sanitized Disney version of the novel.” Somehow I agree. What surprised me the most is how the novel has always been the musical’s source material and yet the two are just so different as far as point of view, focus, and most subplots are concerned. Since my reading was heavily informed by the musical, the novel somehow failed to meet some of my expectations.

Had I read the novel first, I wouldn’t know how I would’ve reacted to the musical. All I can conclude now is that Maguire’s take on the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is more mature and tackles a lot of adult themes. If you think the musical is too political, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. Perhaps that is one of the novel’s downsides. Maguire tries to explain almost everything that L. Frank Baum refused to do so in his 1900 book, sometimes too much that it becomes detrimental to plot development. Wicked is 500 pages long and most of it is just Elphaba doing nothing but grandstanding about politics. As such, nothing much happens.

Another surprising departure the musical makes is how it depicts Elphaba as magically gifted. This forms much of the backbone of the musical’s plot. And so imagine my disappointment waiting for her to demonstrate some sorcery in the novel, which she never does. The broom allows her to levitate but it has more to do with it being enchanted as opposed to her enchanting it via a spell in the musical. She does find a grimoire at Sarima’s palace but she doesn't really get anywhere with it.  If anything, she is just a powerless and bitter old hag who believes the world owes her something. And, oh, a literal terrorist, by the way.

The musical is told from G(a)linda’s perspective, and she becomes a government propaganda heroine in Act 2. The novel is told from Elphaba’s perspective, and G(a)linda totally disappears after the former drops out from Shiz, reappearing only twice before the novel ends. Fiyero becomes the tin man in the musical due to Elphaba’s spell to protect him. In the novel, he dies and it is more of wishful thinking in Elphaba’s part that the tin man accompanying Dorothy could be him. Elphaba’s fatal allergy to water is a propaganda later used to fake her own death in the musical. In the novel, she actually is allergic, and dies as a result.

Apologies for turning this book review into a point-by-point comparison of the musical and the novel. It can’t be helped. All in all, Maguire’s dissection of Baum’s 1900 novel is ambitious but sometimes comes across as reductive. Nonetheless, he does a great job in filling in the worldbuilding that his source material’s author failed to do. The novel is also too mature to be suitable for adolescents. If your teens get obsessed with the material after watching the film, I suggest you take them to Broadway to see the musical instead, unless you want an uncomfortable chat afterwards with a lot of explaining to do.