Which Witch is Wicked?

“Raven hair and ruby lips
Sparks fly from her fingertips
Echoed voices in the night
She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight.”

Until, of course, somebody throws a bucket of water on her!

Which brings up an interesting question: How did the Wicked Witch of the West bathe? Between her and the Monkey Demons, that castle must have smelled pretty, pretty bad.

Seeking the recommended allowance of Hollywood elitist indoctrination, I saw “Wicked” this past weekend, and I gotta tell you, that’s one wicked movie! Which probably begs the question, “What do you mean by that?”

What I mean by that is, in Boston, the land of holes… I mean, the land of Munchkin donut holes, wicked is used as a ubiquitous modifier for all sorts of applications, as in: That’s wicked good, or that’s wicked bad, or that’s one wicked hole. (You’ll have to excuse me—I’m a Flyers/Sixers fan.)

So, that’s what I meant by “wicked movie.”

Unfortunately, Wicked suffers from original sin, the sin of having no context for its premise. As you may recall, Dorothy was hit on the head by a flying window and immediately went into concussion protocol, where she dreamt of the land of OZ. Given that wee bit of reality, how do you produce a prequel to a dream? A pre-hallucination? Bizarro backwards world? Let’s do the Time Warp again?

Having not read the book or seen the Broadway show, I was a blank whiteboard, expecting simply to be entertained, but instead I got a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Thank God for my bucket of popcorn to relieve my angst.

While munching along, my perplexity was brushed away by the grand pageantry of the production. The magnificent sets and incredible costumes swept me off my prostration (modern movie theater’s comforts-of-home recliners), and transported me to the wondrous world of much bigger Munchkins than I remember. The fun script was often charming, but tedious at times. The movie runs a whopping 2 hours and 40 minutes, omitting huge chunks of seriously desired exposition…and a freakin’ ending! The freakin’ movie has no freakin’ ending! Just “To Be Continued” splashed across the screen as the plot finally begins to thicken. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!

In a nutshell, Wicked is an unusual mix of “Barbie” meets “Ghost” meets “Animal Farm” meets Mr. Spock (Green Lives Matter), and floats between the woke-silly and the Broadway-sublime. “What a long, strange trip it’s been,” if you know what I mean.
The music is fairly non-descript with no signature song that I can remember. I will, however, listen to the soundtrack at the gym one day this week to see if I missed something. On the other hand, the choreography is spectacular! (Danny Kaye would be all peachy keen over the amazingly syncopated gyrations.) The acting is excellent, all except Ariana Grande, who plays a Valley Girl and comes off with the depth of a thin slice of bologna. On the other hand, Cynthia Ervo steals the show with an electrifying performance. She is marvelous! Her screen presence is mesmerizing, made even more impactful by her mush-mouth counterpart who speaks too fast and runs her words together. Like the cherry on top, Jeff Goldblum is delightful as a neurotic Wizzard of OZ, a part he was born to play.

So, what do I think? I think Wicked is wicked good, wicked bad, and wicked wonderful. l loved it! The dancing alone is worth the price of admission. Even the obtuse, social messaging didn’t ruin the experience for me because, hey, I can be as empathically compassionate as the next guy. If you don’t think so, just see the attached pictures. I was way ahead of my time at a Halloween party in college. And before you ask what I was wearing under that Girl Scout dress, I can tell you nothing.

That was an extremely awkward way of using a line from my forthcoming book, “How to Sell the Plague,” a book so long forthcoming that Forthcoming is now part of the title. But do not despair, I have another book coming out this spring called “The Capricious Nature of Being,” a collection of stories full of sex, violence, and weird science.

A wicked book!