Opinion | Four Opinion Writers Visit Oz and Ask: Who’s Really ‘Wicked’?

Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Maureen Dowd, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Lydia Polgreen about the new movie “Wicked.”

Patrick Healy: I have a confession to make. While I love “The Wizard of Oz” and I love theater, I was never interested in the Broadway musical “Wicked.” I’d assumed it was for teenage girls, and saw it only because of my job (when I was The Times theater reporter). I remember enjoying its two biggest songs, “Defying Gravity” and “Popular.” But I didn’t feel very invested in the two main characters: Elphaba, who later becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and her frenemy, Glinda. So I am genuinely surprised to report that the new movie “Wicked” melted me. I was swept up in Cynthia Erivo’s performance as Elphaba and found myself crying almost every time her character cried. I felt righteous anger when Elphaba fought against a roundup of talking animals by the authorities and rescued a scared lion cub locked in a cage. A big-budget “Wicked” movie with a strong antifascist message? I did not expect that. What surprised you most about your experience with the movie?

Lydia Polgreen: I came to “Wicked” completely cold. “The Wizard of Oz” was not part of my childhood, nor was musical theater. My knowledge of the Oz story is entirely shaped by my wife’s exuberant enthusiasm for “The Wiz.” When Patrick asked me to join this conversation, I decided not to read or watch anything about the musical or movie and thereby play the straight man, as it were. So I had low expectations: Why would I be drawn in by a back story to a classic tale that never resonated for me?

I guess my surprise was mostly that … I loved this movie? It is a sly illustration of one of my favorite modes of creativity: using one form of art to remake and redefine an existing one. The perfect musical version of this for me prior to seeing “Wicked” was “Fun Home,” the wondrous Alison Bechdel graphic memoir-turned-musical. Musical theater does seem to be an ideal medium for such reinterpretations, and this is a particularly impressive one.

Maureen Dowd: I agree, Lydia, about flipping the script on classics. They’ve done this for a long time with monsters. John Gardner’s “Grendel” from 1971, took the “Beowulf” story from the monster’s point of view. “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys took “Jane Eyre” from the point of view of the Creole heiress who married Mr. Rochester and became “the madwoman in the attic.” And sometimes, it’s not a monster but a marginalized character. Percival Everett just won the National Book Award for “James,” reimagining the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of the enslaved character Jim. Then there’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” by Tom Stoppard.

“Hamilton” arguably does to the American Revolution and the early Republic what “Wicked” does to “The Wizard of Oz,” decentering the traditional protagonists — Dorothy must move aside, as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson must — and retelling the story beat by beat through a peripheral character, making that character more sympathetic. Both these musicals reorient famous American narratives with an eye toward 21st century identity politics.