Stephen Schwartz's music is 'Wicked' good

Stephen Schwartz's music is 'Wicked' good
You could say it was love at first sight.

COURTESY PHOTO

Or maybe someone cast a spell.

Because before he even read Gregory Maguire's best-selling novel, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," Stephen Schwartz knew he wanted to make a Broadway musical about that iconic green witch.

It was a chance comment by a friend, singer/songwriter Holly Near, that grabbed his attention.

"She said, 'Oh, I'm reading this interesting book.' She just mentioned it in passing, as one does," Mr. Schwartz recalls.

But something about the idea and the title caught him. "I had one of those epiphany light-bulb moments."

So when he first read the book, it was with the idea of turning it into a musical. He immediately started condensing the story, as a musical couldn't possibly contain the novel's many characters and subplots.

It took him a year to obtain the rights, and as soon as that was accomplished, he asked Winnie Holtzman to collaborate on the project. From there, he says, "It just sort of evolved between us.

Stephen Schwartz, the man behind the music of Wicked

"We had a wonderful time working together, even though doing a Broadway show is not easy. There were a lot of stressful moments and stressful times, but she and I really had a great working relationship. I think one of the best decisions I made on the show was to ask Winnie to join me on it."

A whole wide world of 'Wicked'

"Wicked," which opened on Broadway on Oct. 8, 2003, broke all box office records at the Gershwin Theatre and is still playing there more than five years later.

Nominated for 10 Tony Awards, it received three. It was also received six Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Lyrics, Outstanding Book, Outstanding Costume Design, Outstanding set design of a musical and outstanding director of a musical. It received 10 Outer Critic nominations and received four awards, including Outstanding Broadway musical, Outstanding direction of a musical, Outstanding set design and Outstanding costume design.

A Chicago production closed after 1,500 performances. The Los Angeles production ran for almost two full years. And an open-ended run began in San Francisco in January.

COURTESY PHOTO Marcie Dodd as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West.

Overseas, a London production opened in September 2006, a Japanese-language production opened in Tokyo in June 2007, and a German-language opened in Stuttgart in November 2007. An Australian production opened last year in July in Melbourne, and a Dutch-language production is scheduled to open in 2010.

And on Saturday, March 7, the second North American tour of "Wicked" begins at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers.

The crew has been working at the theater for three weeks, putting everything together for the show that's heavy in special effects. The actors, previously rehearsing in New York City, arrived in Florida and began rehearsals on the Mann Hall stage Feb. 23. The attraction of the outcast

The hit musical appeals to children and adults alike. It seems everyone wants to know what happened to Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, prior to Dorothy's arrival in Oz.

COURTESY PHOTO "Wicked" is the story of Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, and her relationship with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.

The concept instantly appealed to Mr. Schwartz for a number of reasons. "I like to look at familiar stories and spin them, and come to them from a different point of view," he says. "I like to do pieces of outcast figures, or people who stand apart from society."

After all, this is the man who wrote music and lyrics for "Godspell" and lyrics for the movie "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

As Mr. Schwartz puts it, "You couldn't be more of an outcast than the Wicked Witch of the West.

"And then obviously, the title 'Wicked' suggested that this was going to be an examination of what truly is wickedness and what truly is good, and how we tend to oversimplify those concepts and how political figures abuse them for their own purposes, etc. The title itself suggests all of that."

What he didn't know, until he began reading the novel, was that Mr. Maguire had the two witches meet as university roommates.

"What a great idea!" he says. "And full marks to Gregory. That was his concept."

During the year when he was trying to obtain the rights to the book (he also needed the rights to Mr. Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" books) to transform it into a musical, Mr. Schwartz tried to think of other villains — just in case "Wicked" fell through.

"I thought, well, if I can't do the Wicked Witch of the West, what about the wicked queen from 'Snow White?' What about Iago, what about Judas?"

None of them, however, had the same appeal to him. "There was something just so iconic about her," he says about the Wicked Witch of the West. "There's the fact that she's sort of in our childhood dreams, if you're American, because we've all seen 'The Wizard of Oz' for the first time when we're kids," he says. "Then there's the fact that nobody even knows what her name is, she's just called the Wicked Witch of the West."

Needless to say, Mr. Schwartz was very happy to obtain the rights and not have to try looking for "some other villain," he says.

The rights are to Mr. Maguire's book. (The Oz books are in the public domain, and no longer under copyright law.) They don't have rights to the MGM film, which is still under copyright protection, and so have been very careful not to include imagery that belongs solely to the movie.

What it's all about

"Wicked" is a prequel to "The Wizard of Oz," a kind of behind-the-scenes look at how everything came to be "before Dorothy dropped in," as the advertising phrases it.

"I wanted to know where all the iconic characters and sort of totems in 'The Wizard of Oz' came from," Mr. Schwartz says. "How did she get that broomstick? Who were those flying monkeys? And what was that peaked hat about anyway?

"Why was everyone making such a big fuss about those ruby slippers, and where did that scarecrow come from?"

While Mr. Maguire's novel addressed some of those things, Mr. Schwartz wanted to know about all of them. Over the course of the musical, everything is revealed.

Over his career, which began with his writing the title song for the play "Butterflies Are Free," Mr. Schwartz has received three Grammys, three Academy Awards and six Tony nominations. After "Butterflies," he wrote music and lyrics for "Godspell," "Pippin," "The Magic Show," "The Baker's Wife" and "Working" (based on the Studs Terkel book). He wrote a number of films, including music and lyrics for "The Prince of Egypt" and lyrics for "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Enchanted."

He hadn't planned on returning to Broadway, but "Wicked" lured him.

"I was working happily away in the movies, and having good experiences there, and really enjoying it," he says. "There are many ways in which doing a Broadway show is not the most fun thing in the world to do. I sort of didn't have any compulsion to try to return to that… but then I stumbled upon Mr. Maguire's book and this brilliant idea, and it was just irresistible."

Collaborating with Ms. Holtzman made the experience more palatable.

"Well, if you don't enjoy collaboration, you shouldn't be in the theater, you really shouldn't," he says. "That's what the medium is about. If you're one of those people who wants to do everything my way or the highway, musical theater is not a good field for you to be in."

A natural progression

Mr. Schwartz seemed destined to become a Broadway composer and lyricist. Musically inclined from when he was very young, he wrote his first musical, "Hi Dog," when he was 7 years old. It was for a puppet show starring his sister's stuffed animals and toys.

George Kleinsinger, a neighbor of the family who went on to write "Tubby the Tuba," wrote the music for "Shinbone Alley," a Broadway show starring Eartha Kitt and Eddie Bracken. When Mr. Schwartz saw that show he was 9 years old and says he instantly knew what he wanted to do with his life.

"I just got bitten by the bug," he says.

When he works now, he generally comes up with a title before writing a song.

"If it's not right, then I throw it out, and start a different song," he says. "The title in many ways defines what the focus of the song is going to be, the sort of perimeters of the song. I'm not saying that's how all songwriters work, but I just find it a useful way for me to work."

He's also careful to create a structure for a musical first, developing the storytelling structure and character arcs.

"The big-picture architecture is what I try to begin to get clear for myself first, and then fill in the details," he says. "A lot of the details change over time, evolve… But the structure, once one finds it, remains pretty consistent. It has to be sound.

"You can't be decorating the living room if the foundation is crumbling beneath you. You have to have a firm foundation, and then you can worry about the specifics of the details."

Mr. Schwartz also writes to please himself, not any potential audiences or critics. He refuses to try to second-guess what they might want.

"You write what you would want to see or what you would want to hear, or what makes sense to you," he says. "That's not to say that during the development process, you're not responsive to how audiences at previews or readings, etc., respond to things. If something's not working, or they're not getting something, then clearly one has to go and find a way to make one's work better, to communicate the ideas better."

But, he adds, he's never trying to guess what they might like, or to imitate what's currently in fashion. He just tries to write for himself.

Though his work, particularly "Wicked," is wildly popular, Mr. Schwartz is not universally praised by the critics.

"I'm not a critic's darling," he says. "I don't tend to get very good reviews. I really never have, over the course of my career. I don't get slammed by everybody all the time, but I've never been a critical favorite. Particularly, for whatever reason, I've never been much of a favorite with the New York critics, particularly the theater critics.

"I can't do anything about that… But I've been pretty lucky that it hasn't made much difference in terms of audiences coming to see things that I've done."

Besides, Stephen Schwartz is the only songwriter in Broadway history to have three shows surpass 1,900 continuous performances on Broadway ("Wicked," "Pippin" and "The Magic Show").

And with a second North American touring company of "Wicked" launching this week at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, there's no sign of slowing down.

If you go

>>What: "Wicked" >>When: March 7 through 29 >>Where: The Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, 8099 College Parkway, Fort Myers >>Cost: $146, $96, $86, $72 and $62 >>Information: 481-4849 or www.bbmannpah. com

Some 'Wicked' fun facts

>>Novelist Gregory Maguire, who wrote "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," came up with the name for his title character, Elphaba, by blending first sounds of L. Frank Baum's name, the author of the classic Wizard of Oz series of books. ("El. Fa. Ba.")

>>Lyricist/composer Stephen Schwartz first learned about the book "Wicked" from singer/ songwriter Holly Near while on vacation in Hawaii. Even before he read the novel, Mr. Schwartz knew he wanted to make a musical from it.

>>Producer Marc Platt originally didn't like the song "Popular" and didn't think it belonged in the musical. But the song stayed, and is… well, popular. Mr. Schwartz says he wrote it as a revenge song for all who weren't popular in high school.

>>The mechanical dragon that juts out above the proscenium was nicknamed "Ozwald" by the original cast.