It’s easy to see how you can become obsessed with “Wicked,” the Tony-winning musical that Broadway in Tucson is presenting at Centennial Hall.
Stephen Schwartz’s mostly wonderful tunes — “Popular,” “Defying Gravity,” “I’m Not That Girl,” “For Good,” “Dancing Through Life” — lure you in and the story — a prequel of “Wizard of Oz” that tells the backstory of how Glinda became the Good Witch and Elphaba landed the role as Wicked Witch — keeps you hooked.
We saw the performance on Thursday, Jan. 27, and we came away with three reasons we would go see it again before it ends its run Feb. 6.
The story: How did the Good Witch and Wicked Witch in “Wizard of Oz” come to be? Apparently at boarding school, when Glinda (Allison Bailey) and Elphaba (Talia Suskauer) roomed together, became best friends, vied for the attention of the campus playboy Fiyero (Jordan Litz) and ended up on the same side of defeating the evil Wizard of Oz.
The story has a lot of thin and arguably unnecessary subplots — Elphaba’s animal cruelty crusade became a dead-ended distraction, and veiled hints of women’s rights were never fully fleshed out — but it also has plenty of foreshadowing to “Wizard of Oz,” from Elphaba putting a spell on her sister’s boyfriend that turned him into the Tin Man and pleas for help from Dorothy and Toto, whom Elphaba locks in a cellar after the tornado that dumps them in Oz also lands on the Munchkin Country home of Elphaba’s wheelchair-using sister Nessarose (Amanda Fallon Smith).
The performances: The ensemble cast was terrific, including Litz, who was playboy/quarterback handsome and had a wonderful voice, and Sharon Sachs as Madame Morrible, who was evil enough to sell heat lamps to Tucsonans in the middle of July.
Bailey was hilarious as Glinda — “Ga-linda, with the ga-ga-ga” — and struck the balance of annoying — she nailed the nasally whine in the opening song “Nobody Mourns the Wicked” — and lovable — she showed off her vulnerability when she confesses she has matured in “I’m Not That Girl.”
But Suskauer’s Elphaba was worth the price of admission. Suskaeur had an amazing soprano range, hitting the high notes of “Defying Gravity” that raised the hair on your arms before turning in an emotional plea of friendship in the “For Good” duet with Bailey.
The escape: Let’s face it: We’ve been through hell these past two years and the chance to safely — everyone is vaccinated and wearing masks — sit in a theater for 2½ hours and escape the outside world and the distractions of COVID and the divided politics it has wrought is heaven-sent.
“Wicked’ takes us to a world where monkeys fly and goats talk, evil is sometimes good and the handsomest man in the room falls in love with the least attractive woman. We laughed, we almost cried and we forgot the world outside those theater doors, if only for a moment.
