Director Jon M Chu pulls off quite a trick with this manageably proportioned second half to the epic musical prequel-myth inspired by The Wizard of Oz – and based, of course, on the hit stage show. It keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one, and we still get those periodic, surreal pronouncements given by the city’s notables to the diverse folk of Oz, those non-player characters crowding the streets. But now the focus narrows to the main players and their explosive romantic crises, essentially through two interlocking love triangles: Glinda the Good, Elphaba the Wicked and the Wizard – and Glinda, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero, the handsome young military officer with whom both witches are not so secretly in love, as well as possibly having feelings for each other.
Jeff Goldblum is excellent as the Wizard, who pretty much becomes the Darth Vader of Oz: a slippery carnival huckster who is realising that his seedy charm is corroding his soul. Jonathan Bailey pivots to a much more serious, less campy, more passionate Prince and Ariana Grande is, as ever, delicate and doll-like as Glinda, though with less opportunity for comedy. But the superstar among equals is Cynthia Erivo, bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, and revealing a new vulnerability and maturity. Elsewhere, Marissa Bode returns as Nessarose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-using half-sister; Ethan Slater is Boq, the Munchkin working as her servant; and Michelle Yeoh brings stately sweetness to the role of the Wizard’s private secretary Madame Morrible.
We finished the last movie wondering what on earth happens when the action has to come up against the narrative “present” – ie, how the prequel would dovetail with what we know of the actual Wizard of Oz film. If Elphaba’s perceived evil is just patriarchal society demonising her differentness, then how are they are going to play her final embrace of out-and-out wickedness? And if Glinda repudiates her, will that just look heartless? Well, the film manages all this with a great deal of tragicomic brio.
Slightly odder is the tangential appearance of Dorothy herself, carried into Oz in her Kansas shack on a whirlwind, an event that kickstarts the final act. Her three eventual companions – the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow – all get, in their various ways, little origin-myth-type backstories like villains in the Marvel or DC Universes; each little reveal in fact reminded me of Robin’s emergence in The Dark Knight Rises. But the Scarecrow’s story – which you might guess a few minutes before it happens – is weirdly muddled and deferred and it isn’t clear how or why the Scarecrow is lacking a brain in the way the Lion and Tin Man are lacking courage and a heart. It’s tangled and a bit bewildering; but then so is the original film, in which we never know whether to believe in the Wizard’s final benediction.
But what a performance from Erivo; it is genuinely moving when the Prince has to convince Elphaba what we, the audience, have always known: that she is beautiful.
• Wicked: For Good is out on 20 November in Australia, and 21 November in the UK and US.
