Theatrical Adaptation

Wicked

The musical Wicked has many differences from the book than I ever would have thought it to have. First, in the musical, when Glinda gets to Shiz and is roomed with Elphaba, all the other students already are on her side, and adore her. In the book, however, she is a nobody at first, and the reason why she is roomed with Elphaba is because she doesn’t have her Amax to help her get acquainted with the other girls at Shiz, and it takes her awhile to get settled in with the other girls. And she doesn’t let anyone know for the longest time that she and Elphie are roommates. But in the musical, everyone knows from the first day that they are roommates.
Another big difference that comes to mind is the fact that in the musical, you don’t hear much about the wizard until she actually meets him. But in the book, you get a lot of information about him from the side conversations people have about him, and the stories they tell, and even the narrator helps with the stories of the Wizard in some cases. They are the same kind of person, the Humbug type of man, but you don’t hear all the horrible things he does to the Animal population nearly as much in the musical as it is explained in the book.
And, of course, the biggest difference is that Elphie doesn’t die in the end in the musical. She lives on, and so does Fiyero as the Scarecrow. That was a difference that I don’t think should have been made. Yes, the musical has a happy ending which helps make it more entertaining to go watch, but at the same time, it would have been nice to have the same ending as the book to get the same effect on the audience as all the other adaptations of the Wizard of Oz have had.

posted by LilmissKS @ 1:24 AM