wicked the life and times of the wicked witch

I just felt like a big mess.'īut by opening night, she'd channeled all that self-doubt into what would be a Tony-winning character. She always just, her first take on everything was just so funny and so right. And Kristin was so beautiful and so Glinda. Just like a mad little student with my loose-leaf script and ripping out pages. 'They were rewriting things all the time, and I wasn't great at cold readings, so I couldn't always deliver the new lines perfectly. 'I was always afraid I was gonna get fired,' Menzel said. I'm in!'' Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth in the original Broadway production of 'Wicked.'Ĭhenoweth went on to become the show's original good witch, Glinda and the title role of the Wicked Witch went to Broadway veteran Idina Menzel, who said at first she was a little bit shaky. 'I walked in and I sang 'Popular' for the first time. She recalled: 'Stephen Schwartz says, 'I got this part. 'I do, but I'm not gonna say what it is!' he laughed.īut Schwartz like the song 'Popular,' and he knew he wanted actress Kristin Chenoweth to sing it. Smith asked Schwartz, 'I know they're all your babies, but do you have a favorite number?' The story got the attention of legendary composer Stephen Schwartz, the man who wrote the music and lyrics for a few other Broadway shows, including 'Godspell' and 'Pippin' – and he thought 'Wicked' would work as a musical, too. It’s a book that has changed a lot of lives, including mine.'Once I got it, I thought, 'Every time her name is spoken or sung, I will be tipping my hat to the original person who created her, Lyman Frank Baum,' Maguire said. “I knew that Gregory Maguire had come up with a genius idea the moment I heard about Wicked. What happens when a witch, green or otherwise, gets to tell her own story instead of being vilified and misrepresented by dominant cultural authority? We witches know how that turns out!” - Holly Near

I felt a quiet joy that sisterhood had made its way to the Yellow Brick Road. “Long before there was any thought of a musical, I read Wicked. It has the power to reshape one’s view of the world.” - Winnie Holzman, co-writer of Wicked: The Musical It was radical when Gregory first wrote it, and remains radical. “At the heart of this remarkable, unforgettable novel is a wildly original premise- one that only a writer with Gregory Maguire’s intellect and daring could have dreamed up: that the Wicked Witch of the West was a real woman, with an actual name, and her own story to tell. 'Gregory gets the complications and uniqueness of women very well.' - Kristen Chenoweth

It’s an astonishing achievement.' - Philip Pullman 'Maguire did something truly remarkable with this novel, in managing to inhabit, enlarge, deepen and find new dimensions in a world that had been invented by another writer, and in doing so make something entirely new.

Wicked the life and times of the wicked witch