Wicked - The Untold Story of the Witches

of Oz is based on Gregory Maguire's 1995
book Wicked: The Life and Times of the

Wicked Witch of the West.

Photos by Joan Marco;

Blockbuster tale of the witches of Oz

flies into the Masonic.

Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News

W

hen Gregory Maguire,
an author and con-
sultant in creative
writing for children, lived in
London in the early 1990s, he
was shocked by a local crime that
made major headlines around
the world. Some schoolboys kid-
napped and murdered a toddler
just "for the thrill of it He could
think of only two other people
— one real, the other fictional
— who were evil enough to corn-
mit such a heinous crime: Adolf
Hitler the fictional Wicked Witch
of the West.

Maguire, 51, of Boston, who
wrote his doctoral thesis on
children's fantasy, became fasci-
nated by the subject and wrote
a book in 1995 about the latter:
Wicked: The Life and Times of
the Wicked Witch of the West.
It fit in perfectly with America's
longtime fascination with the
1939 movie The Wizard of Oz,
whose story actually was first
performed for the first time on
the stage in 1904.
It was inevitable the book
would become a Broadway musi-
cal. Wicked — The Untold
Story of the Witches of Oz is
the highest grossing show cur-
rently running on Broadway,
averaging more than $1 million

a week. Wicked makes its long-
awaited Detroit debut Wednesday,
May 31, at the Masonic Temple
Theatre in Detroit, where it con-
tinues through June 18.
"The way ticket sales have
been going, I would clas-
sify Wicked in the blockbuster
category, like Lion King and
Phantom of the Opera," said
Alan Lichtenstein, executive
director of the Nederlander Co.
"Some performances are com-
pletely sold out, but some tickets
are still available for most."

Jewish Creators
It took the talents of two Jewish
show-business veterans over
a four-year period to bring

Wicked to life on
the stage: composer
Stephen Schwartz,
58, who wrote the
music and lyrics, and
Winnie Holzman, 51,
who wrote the book,
a rather loose, fairy-
tale-like adaptation of
Maguire's novel, which
is more politically
oriented than the stage Julia Murney as Elphaba and Kendra
version.
Kassebaum as Glinda in Wicked
Schwartz also com-
posed for Codspell,
writer who specializes in young
Pippin and The Magic Show,
female characters. She created
all of which played simultane-
So-Called Life and wrote
My
ously on Broadway, plus sev-
eral animated musical movies.
Wickedly on page 84
Holzman is mainly a television

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May 25 • 2006

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