Good and evil

Published Dec. 30, 2009 at 7:19 p.m.
...Wicked is a grand spectacle of sights and sound
...From L. Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came the 1939 film; from Gregory Maguire's 1995 book Wicked came the 2003 Broadway hit of the same name...

WITCHY WOMEN Vivino and Schwartz.

From L. Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came the 1939 film; from Gregory Maguire's 1995 book Wicked came the 2003 Broadway hit of the same name. That span of more than a century has embedded the story in the American psyche, never more evident than in the multi-generational audience that filled the Providence Performing Arts Center for the opening of Wicked (through January 10).

Both Maguire and the writers of the musical (book by Winnie Holzman, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz) tell the back story of the Wicked Witch of the West, though the play tightens its focus on the friendship between Glinda (the "good witch") and the "wicked witch" Elphaba, named from Baum's "L," "F" (Frank), and "Ba" (Baum). The unlikely pair meet at college, where Elphaba (Donna Vivino) arrives with her wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose (Brynn O'Malley), aka Witch of the East, who later gets felled by Dorothy's house.

Elphaba was born green (due to an elixir her mother drank while pregnant). Her mother (Lauren Masiello) was fed another herb to ward off "greenness" during her second pregnancy, but unfortunately it killed her and crippled her child, leaving an embittered widower (Kevin McMahon) to raise both girls. Are you beginning to grasp the heavy shadow of guilt Elphaba lives under? Not to mention the ever-present cloud of prejudice against her verdigris skin — Glinda (Chandra Lee Schwartz) initially mocks her anger with "the artichoke is steamed!"

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