Wicked the Musical Set Design and the New German Trailer
Wicked is one of the most successful contemporary musicals with smash hit touring and sit-down productions all around the world. The original Broadway design has almost always been recreated as part of the appeal of the show. The elaborate set with Galinda’s floating bubble, Elphaba’s flying rig and giant cape, and the clockwork dragon on the proscenium define the show as much as the music and book.
It is a bit of an anomaly for a production this elaborate to almost exclusively have replica productions around the world. Similarly elaborate shows like Cats, Phantom of the Opera, and even Starlight Express had major differences in the original professional productions around the world as the creative teams tweaked the material to better fit the theatre and the audience. Shows with considerably simpler sets like Book of Mormon and Six or projection-driven shows like Dear Evan Hansen do tend to have replica productions because they’re easier to recreate.
Wicked replicas take massive amounts of resources to pull off. The flying lift alone for “Defying Gravity” is a huge feat of engineering to look that effortless onstage. If one thing goes wrong in the safety procedures (even on Broadway), you get the rare “no fly show” where Elphaba runs downstage and the other actors literally lay on the ground and pretend she’s soaring above them. Kristen Chenoweth infamously injured her neck during the pre-Broadway San Francisco tryout of Wicked while riding in on the mechanical bubble, resulting in massive changes to how that entire effect worked in subsequent productions. Safely recreating just these two moments is a huge challenge.
There have been non-replica productions before. Universal Studios Japan had a 30-minute condensed version of the musical that eliminated Fiyero, Madame Morrible, Boq, Nessarose, and Doctor Dillamond from the plot (aka the main characters connected to Shiz University and the animals losing their speech storyline). Finland and Denmark both had non-replica full-length productions that played less than a year. The most successful productions around the world consistently recreate the original Broadway show.
The second ever German production released a trailer for a brand new non-replica production and I can’t avoid it. Everywhere I look on social media and message boards, people are discussing all the changes and what it means for the show.
The sets appear to mostly be lighting effects. The Emerald City are created with bright green lights against a black background. There are rounded arches upstage loaded with lights and projection screens to create different sky effects. The lights have a lot of motion, like the clockwork dragon proscenium, against a black background.
The costumes are super saturated, with Galinda in shades of hot pink and magenta, the citizens of Emerald City where sparkling emerald green, and the school uniforms being a rich maroon. Smaller set pieces on flats role out to set up tables at the school, the cornfield outside of Munchkin City, and Elphaba’s castle. Even the makeup is different, with Elphaba in a teal rather than the screen-replica green from The Wizard of Oz.
Obviously, there is some digital animation going on to enhance the effects. There is no way there is a flying spell circle above the book in “No Good Deed” that will look that precise onstage. I do believe that the different flying rig for Elphaba will look impressive in the production, but it’s hard to tell if any of the workings have been hidden with some light editing. It looks like a similar effect to how they made The Witch fly in the original Into the Woods and I’m all here for it. There aren’t many wide shots of any scene, either, so we can’t quite make out the full scale of the set beyond the action with the actors.
The important thing to know here is the original replica production in Germany was not considered a huge success. It ran for a little over three years in Stuttgart before transferring Oberhausen where it played another year and a half. The new production is opening in Hamburg in August.
It will be interesting to see if this darker looking production will have more success in this market. If it does, we might start seeing more professional non-replica productions take bigger risks with the material. What I see in the trailer is a huge amount of potential when licensing starts to open up more.
Wicked has some great material in it, is driven by female leading characters, and has a ton of ensemble parts. As a theatre educator, I can guarantee you that this show is going to be a smash hit with schools when the rights become available. The students are always asking if we can do the show already, which gives me the in to teach about stage rights and licensing. Seeing a professional production create their own version of this magic-driven story with lights and costuming rather than mechanical special effects and giant set pieces makes the idea of a smaller school or community production seem more achievable. That’s a good and healthy thing for any musical to endure through time.
