changed, for good

a love letter to Wicked

Let it be known that, as a teenager, Wicked the Musical became an emerald and pink, obnoxiously permanent part of me. Along with the Taylor Swift albums that were out at the time, the songs from Wicked (Original Broadway Cast Recording) were entrenched in my mind and soul. I listened to them daily on a CD player, so I knew every lyric before I finally got to see it live from one of the top rows of Victoria Apollo Theatre London.

The ending made me gasp – something that wasn’t spoiled from listening to the soundtrack, so I got to be gloriously wrong about my knowledge of the plot, and found myself weeping even more than I’d predicted. And I saw it many times after this – including day-seating with Imogen. Getting into London in the extremely early hours and waiting around with adults who had cast signatures tattooed the whole way up their arms. Sitting there front row and hardly believing what my eyes were showing me. There was the time I convinced my GCSE Music teacher to organise a school trip, but the bus driver took us to the wrong theatre and we missed the show. It somehow got reorganised, and relief flooded over me as I felt far more at home in the theatre than I ever did on the bus with people from school. There was the time I surprised my mum with tickets on Mother’s Day, and I was glowing.

Wicked was all the more magical to me because I got to share it with my best friend Imogen. Having a Glinda to my Elphaba was a reminder that I was never as lonely as I thought I was at the time, something true of the protagonist herself. There’s a video I published on YouTube in which Imogen and I sang the entire soundtrack in my living room while my parents and brother were all away. So young and so free with nothing holding us back from belting – later discovering the screeching was heard by my neighbours.

me (left) and Imogen (right) 10 years ago :’)

Talk of the Wicked movie was going on for years and years. I was pessimistic about it, fearful that my beloved musical would be ruined – they’d cast it poorly and butcher the story and I’d feel forever defensive over the stage show. But of course, the film was actually sensational. You can tell when something’s created with so much passion, and the Wicked movie is one of those spectacular things. It is truly a love letter to what Wicked already was. They brought Oz to life with the most magical sets, cast it almost perfectly, and injected glorious heart, and life, into the screen. And the Idina/Kristin cameo made me gasp – as much of a shock as when I first saw Wicked’s ending on stage.

When I watch Cynthia and Ariana crying in interviews, I think about the many, many tears I shed over Wicked myself – and that’s just as an audience member looking inwards. It’s no surprise to me that they’re so teary, and every wild emotion I’ve felt towards the musical feels validated.

Queerness makes you an outcast, which I believe is why so many queer people in particular resonate with Wicked and Elphaba’s story – I loved reading Rachel Karp’s essay on queerness in Wicked. Wicked represents girlhood as my awkward, closeted teen self understood it. Not having the right clothes and knowing that even if I did, it wouldn’t make any difference to how I was already perceived. Realising, gradually, that pink wasn’t the enemy. That pink and friendship and frills could exist alongside green parts of me, and parts that weren’t considered pretty. That I could embrace pink and green equally. That even though I felt like I was “other”, this didn’t mean I was exempt from girlhood.

I haven’t seen the second part, Wicked: For Good yet – Imogen and I waited until we could watch it together. How blessed am I, to be important enough to someone that they’ll wait for me? To share something with someone, and have it still be “our thing”, all these years later? I know that in the cinema I will cry, and cry, and cry some more – patterns repeating themselves. We were changed by the musical, back then, and in so many ways, nothing has changed since.

My teenage self clinging to Taylor Swift albums and Wicked, never could have predicted the future phenomenons that would occur a decade later. The Eras Tour, and then a Wicked movie – thousands of girls and gays seeing the commercial success of things that were dismissed as merely being for teenage girls, like that was a problem. Things I was expected to grow out of, still relevant now. Things that changed me for good, still being good, and getting to revel in that.

I wouldn’t be the same without Wicked, and I wouldn’t want to be.

(im)possible dreams