It wasn’t the musical lovers who have seen the stage show more times than they’ve had birthdays that convinced me to finally find some time to get the Tube to Victoria and head not to the Apollo Victoria Theatre but to the Curzon cinema on Victoria Street. It was the driving forces behind Ballet Nights, a series of evenings of ‘classical ballet, neo-classical and contemporary dance’, Jamiel and Constance Devernay-Laurence, who I happened to meet on the London Underground. They were heading home with bags and bags of Christmas shopping and I – rather typically – was en route to a theatre. Amongst other things in our conversation, the Wicked movie came up, and I thought to myself afterwards that if dance specialists are telling me I ought to go and see it, well, what have I got to lose?
By the time I saw it, of course, all of the diehard fans of Wicked preceded me, but there were still, at the screening I went to, some near-constant rustling of confectionery packs and people talking at full conversational volume. Luckily for me, however, I bagged a seat near the front of the screen, and the noise was coming from some distance behind me. The sound of the motion picture itself was quite loud from my vantage point, which was a big help in terms of drowning out the distractions. And of course, the twats made a point of applauding at the end of a movie (I’m told this is commonplace elsewhere – but this isn’t ‘elsewhere’, this is Blighty).
The film did feel a little shorter than the two hours and forty-one minutes running time though found myself checking my wristwatch after what turned out to be an hour and fifty minutes. Others at the screening I went to felt it necessary to use the conveniences mid-movie. (I don’t actually have anything against that – I’ve done it myself at the cinema on occasion.) No expense – it seemed to me – was spared putting this film together, and there’s an entire sequel, already made, to be released at the back end of 2025. The expanded running time is used wisely as the backstory is told far more clearly than I remember it in the theatre. Plotholes remain: does The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) have powers, as asserted by Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), or no power at all, as asserted by the very same Elphaba minutes later? Elphaba’s own powers (she irrefutably has some) overflow when she loses her temper, except there are times when she loses her temper without consequence.
I am still in two minds with regards to the visuals and choreography – the colour schemes are very bold, to say the least, though I wonder if it is a case of overkill. Almost everything, palette-wise, is done to extremes – Elphaba’s preference for dark clothing is as excessive as Glinda’s (Ariana Grande-Butera, as she is credited) dedication to all things borderline fluorescent. I found it remarkably easy to sit back and enjoy proceedings. This is one of those movies where there’s as much scenery and backdrop as there needs to be to make every scene work as it should. Interestingly, I would also like to commend this film for providing me with a moment in which I was genuinely frightened to the point I jumped out of my seat. That isn’t something that has happened to me for a long time.
I couldn’t possibly claim my life has been changed for good (if you know, you know) as a result of seeing this film, but at the same time I don’t regret giving up an evening to do so. If you can tolerate a musical at the theatre, you can tolerate Wicked at the cinema.
Four stars
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