The musical 'Wicked' has been the best selling musical worldwide since The Phantom of the Opera - this Friday, I watched it at Det Ny Teater in Copenhagen. The theatre had as the first theatre been allowed to make their own production, i.e. do costume- and set design themselves rather than have it dictated by the copyright owners (something which has so far not been allowed with Phantom of the Opera). It has received very good reviews in the Danish papers, around 5 out of 6 stars mostly - and it is a good musical.
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| Opening scene, Glinda greeting the people of Oz. |
The opening scene had us worried about the vocal performances; Glinda (Anette Heick) starts of with a rather high-pitched number (picture above), and the actress had evidently not done her vocal warm-up thoroughly enough, as she missed a lot of the high notes and sounded generally very strained. Not the best start to a musical. Luckily, she steadily improved through the course of the story, and by the second act she did a decent job. The other main character Elphaba, played by Maria Lucia Heiberg Rosenberg, was a better singer by far, which also helped us to move on from the bad start. But none of the singers ever really managed to reach the level I've experienced in London - although they were quite good singers, a lot of the songs seem quite challenging, and it mostly sounded as if they just barely got there, a tinge of strain in their voices. I've posted some links to recordings of the Danish production and the Broadway production below - judge for yourselves :) Reading this through, it all sounds very negative - but my point is that it's a pity we don't really have any really good musical actors in Denmark, perhaps except Maria Lucia - and they are kind of a must for a musical like this one.
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| The Wizard of Oz and the history teacher Doctor Dillamond (who happens to be a goat) |
But a few things we do have: Brilliant musicians and set- and costume designers (or at least... we're good at importing them - Paul Farnsworth, an Englishman, was responsible for the two latter). As I haven't seen the original, I can't say how costumes and sets were compared to that, but I thought they were marvellous. The Ozzian costumes on the picture above I particularly liked - and in general, Farnsworth had managed to hit just the right combination of oddity and recognizable signals with his costumes. One of my favourites was the costume (and acting) of Doctor Dillamond, Elphaba and Glinda's goat university history professor (played by Kristian Boland), on the picture to the right.
You can see some of the costume drawings here.
One of the interesting things about the musical is that it turns the traditional "Wizard of Oz" story completely around - but in a way which fits into the original. The Wicked Witch of the West is in reality the good one, the only one who stands up for the animals which are made into scapegoats by the Wizard - banned from speaking, kept in cages. The wizard is turning Oz into an increasingly totalitarian society, and he wants Elphabas help to do it - which she refuses. Similarly, Glinda is a spoiled, selfish brat who only learns magic because Elphaba insists on it - because she thinks Glinda has helped her sister (when she in reality has simply used her to get rid of an unwanted admirer). The musical opened with a crowd cheering over the death of the Wicked Witch, singing "Alle hader ondskab" (translates to "Everybody hates evil"), which is what "no one mourns the wicked" has been translated to in Danish. This recurring phrase of course takes on another meaning as the 'true' story is unfolded, and it is one of the many criticisms of the use of scapegoats and fear of the unknown, utilised by those in power, which extends beyond Oz to our everyday lives.
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| Elphaba and Glinda singing "Jeg har forandret mig" ("For Good" in English) |
As always, I was slightly bothered by the English to Danish translation; and listening to the original songs here afterwards they are clearly better. But it was not as much as when I watched My Fair Lady - I haven't had the chance to watch Wicked in English. There were a couple of things I picked up on, but I think generally the translation seemed okay.
I guess when it comes to musical-music, I have my favourites: The soundtracks of Chicago, Phantom of the Opera, Cabaret, West Side Story and My Fair Lady are all on the 'most played' list on my iPod. But I'm not sure the Wicked music will be - at least not the Danish. The songs were good, but they seemed to land somewhere in between The Phantom of the Opera and West Side Story - they had the ambition of becoming goose-bump-evoking songs, but few of them really made it; on the other side they were neither the kind of musical songs that you walk around singing for ages afterwards like those from West Side Story or Chicago, simply because they're too difficult. Too many canons were fired to begin with, and there is a limit to how many 'grand' songs you can cope with. I know I'm comparing this musical with some of the greatest classics of the genre, which is perhaps not fair - but on the other hand, that must be the aspiration. That said, Defying Gravity and For Good were really good songs (if a little too Disney-ish for my taste in musicals) - and I might even end up downloading the soundtrack at some point ^^
As I said in the beginning, Wicked at Det Ny Teater was a good musical. Alltogether I wouldn't say it was brilliant though - 4 out of 6 stars perhaps. Costumes and set design, along with the music was great - but I was a bit dissapointed with the singing, mainly in the beginning. I know Copenhagen is not London, and that we don't have as many good musical actors - but then we'll just have to make an effort to find them wherever they're hiding.
Mine vinger bær' (Elphaba) - English (Defying Gravity):
Populær (Glinda) - English (Popular):
There's no need to excuse ourselves because we are a small country. We simply don't have the same tradition and it's a pity - but I think by comparing this to the traditional image of a musical you might miss the things that are usually thought to be our forces. I'm pretty sure that they've been aware of the not-as-crazy singing skills so I bet they've focused on something else. If they haven't, they ought to. :b Perhaps our tradition for satire or the possibilities that the Danish language offers (like in My Fair Lady)? <3
ReplyDeleteYeah - but they're not allowed to change the story, so the satire might be a bit difficult to add into it; and it didn't seem to me like they'd tried to utilise our language as you write, they'd pretty much translated directly with a varying result. I think it's difficult, if you choose to make a production of this musical, to not focus on the vocals, because the music is written as it is - in that sense, My Fair Lady seems more within our reach, because it is not written to be as demanding of the actors. Then again, we've had a good production of Phantom of the Opera, but I think that was difficult enough to attract actual opera singers - of which we do have several good ones. I think Wicked's problem is that it lands in some kind of vocal greyzone; and then that the translations takes away some of the elegance from many of the songs.
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