About the work
Stephen Schwartz's musical in two acts, with a book by Winnie Holzman, was premiered in 2003 at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway. Based on Gregory Maguire's revisionist 1995 novel, the work retells The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the supposedly wicked witch. Wicked became one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history and was adapted into a major two-part film released in 2024 and 2025.
Plot
At Shiz University in the Land of Oz, the green-skinned, principled Elphaba and the popular, ambitious Galinda are forced to share a room. Despite initial loathing, they form an intense and complicated friendship. When Elphaba discovers that the revered Wizard is behind the persecution of Oz's talking animals and refuses to collaborate, she is branded the Wicked Witch of the West. Galinda, recast as Glinda the Good, rises within the corrupt regime. The two meet again as apparent enemies amid the arrival of Dorothy Gale, whose fallen house has killed Elphaba's sister Nessarose. Through a sequence of sacrifices, deceptions, and revelations, Elphaba fakes her own death and escapes Oz alive with her love Fiyero, leaving Glinda to reform the kingdom in her absence.
Cultural significance
Wicked has become the defining musical of the twenty-first-century Broadway era, running continuously since 2003 and grossing more than any other title at several major theatres. The Act One finale Defying Gravity, sung by Elphaba as she takes flight, is one of the most performed numbers in contemporary musical-theatre auditions and a cultural touchstone in its own right. The work's themes of female friendship, propaganda, and moral complexity resonated with audiences who had outgrown more straightforward fantasies. The German-language production ran at the Stage Palladium Theater Stuttgart from 2007 to 2008, and Jon M. Chu's film adaptation introduced the story to a vast new audience.