I saw a musical for the first time in my life. The musical “WICKED” came in first place for nine years on box-office charts. I didn’t know whether this musical had a positive or negative influence on me. To the musical newcomer, it was a big challenge to go to Seoul Samsung Bluesquare to see the musical, but I gained a good result from the challenge.
This musical “WICKED” is a spinoff work of the famous classic ‘The Wizard Of Oz’. Although the team was not a Broadway tour team but an Australian musical team, its performance was good enough to move me.
“WICKED” deals with the story before Dorothy falls into the world of “Oz”. It tells the secret stories of why the tinned iron woodcutter didn’t have a heart, why one became a scarecrow and why the lion became a coward. “WICKED” raised a question as to if the bad witch was really bad, and if the nice witch was really nice. Also, it doubts why it is bad that the bad witch was angry at Dorothy, who killed her sister.
The bad witch ‘Elphaba’ was actually very able and smart. While she followed a great cause and she satisfied herself for the great cause, the beautiful and kind witch ‘Glinda’ had a lot of vanity and didn’t give up what she had. The bad witch wore a black dress with green body, and the kind witch wore a white dress. The writer of “WICKED” said to people who judge by appearance, “I don’t think you are pretty, but look at you differently.”
In Act One, the Emerald City showed me a world of illusion.
There were a lot of subtle pleasures. Glinda was beautiful, but full of idiocy, and the stiff dance of Elphaba was sad and funny because of her green body.
I can’t forget the last scene of Act One. Glinda and Elphaba ran away from the wizard. In this situation, Elphaba used the flying magic and Elphaba left the life of the monster everyone teased and lived a different life, being called a bad witch. The last lyric is that “Someone can fly sometime at once! Act against the gravity of life!” This fantastic line can appear in the story, but we want it in the reality, too.
Act Two showed a correlation with ‘The Wizard of Oz’. It was really fun to find an association between the musical and the original. I wanted to see the original one more time when the musical finished.
I learned a lot of lessons from the show. I want everyone who reads this writing to find the philosophy in “WICKED”. The philosophy that I learned is that the story of a children’s book can tell reality.