By Mage Hadley
It has been hard to ignore the musical Wicked this year with the release of Part One of its movie adaptation starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande—and I have not been singularly immune to its charms.
Wicked is a messy, heartfelt, and very queer prequel to (the already incredibly queer) The Wizard of Oz, following the friendship and deeply complicated relationship between The Wicked Witch of The West and Glinda The Good. The tale imagines what could have led them to the events in The Wizard of Oz if their story began when they met in school. The recent film adaptation has been more successful than I think anyone could have imagined, bringing in audiences old and new to the story. And this renaissance of a musical that has been on Broadway for over twenty years has me reflecting on my youth.
The first time I saw Wicked was two days after my fifteenth birthday and although I am now 30, I remember it as clearly as if it were this morning.
Being 15 is hard, and at the time I was struggling with school, with my family, with a lot—most hauntingly, perhaps, with my first sapphic relationship. I was young and in love with my closest friend at the time. Our relationship had become one of a twisted youthful romance, a badly kept secret, and a bisexual mess of kissing each other and kissing boys too and not having the words or bravery to describe what was happening to and with us.
There were many moments in my childhood where I realised that I might be bisexual, even if I did not have the words for it, and there were many comforting pieces of media or books that helped me with that grand internal reckoning. However, Wicked came to me at the time that I seemed to most need it. Perhaps that is the wonder of witchcraft.
Though it was nearly half a lifetime ago, the experience remains clear. I remember where I sat and the smell of the theatre. I remember my amazement at the grand dragon that hangs above the stage and being blown away by just how damn green the actress on stage was, unable to figure out whether it was make-up or a magical theatre trick of the light. I remember that when the song “What Is This Feeling?” began—a song where the two main characters sing about their hatred for each other in a very homoerotic way—the friend I was sitting next to leaned over to me and whispered: “Are they gay?”. And, well, good question.
When I returned home from the theatre that evening I knew I needed to explore and consume everything Wicked that I could. Luckily for me, my father worked in a book factory at the time, and he had purchased for me a copy of the book that the musical was based on. He had actually purchased it a year earlier thinking I might be interested in it and I had never picked it up, but it waited for me on that fateful night. And the obsession continued. However, reading the book (which I did in one sitting and going to school the next day on very little sleep) was an experience entirely different from watching the musical. Whilst the musical is queer in the way all musicals are, and has some very strong undertones if you are the type of person who looks for them, it still plays the relationship between Elphaba, The Wicked Witch, and Glinda, The Good Witch, as a platonic one. An incredibly intense and soulmate type platonic relationship, but platonic nonetheless. The musical even has them falling in love with the same man, Fiyero, and their only admitted attraction is to him, never to each other. Wicked the book, however, is incredibly queer in an explicit way with Elphaba and Glinda both being portrayed as having romantic relationships with, and/or attractions to, men and women. Gregory Maguire, the gay writer who wrote the original Wicked book, has discussed many times that the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda in the book is a romantic one. They even share a kiss and many of the other characters in the story comment on the relationship between the two women. The relationship is then discussed more throughout the next three books in the series.
However, the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda is also a messy one, about navigating romantic feelings for your best friend in a world that treats any “other” as degenerate. One where the conservative atmosphere in which you grow up stifles the romantic feelings you might have for someone that society deems you are not supposed to have. And this feeling was one that I felt so deeply at the time that having a book, and a musical, that talked about the hardships of being queer and in love with your friend and totally alone in what feels like a struggle against authoritarianism, meant more than I could have put into words back then. Words I struggle to find even now. Wicked gave me a silent-yet-familiar comfort when I was in some dark places as a teenager. I could carry the soundtrack with me wherever I went, on my old second-hand iPod. I could take the book with me and reread passages whenever I needed to know that what I was feeling was not unique. I loved my copy of Wicked so hard that the beautiful painted green foil edged pages faded and the hardback binding unravelled.
Seeing a new generation of people fall in love with Wicked has brought me a lot of joy. I recently went to the cinema to see it in the company of two of my relatives, both queer teens. Not only was I left with a sense of warmth because I saw something that meant so much to me be lovingly brought to life, I was also drawn to reflect on the world I had experienced as a queer kid and the one teenagers experience now. Nothing has changed and yet, everything has changed. Wicked is now around to inspire and comfort a new generation, in a new medium, like it was for me. But when I was 15 and found Wicked, there was a sense of shadow to my enjoyment, an unspoken feeling to the emotions I had—a sense of secrecy that is reflected in the text and the relationship that Elphaba and Glinda have with each other. Now, as the story of these two women reaches a far larger audience on the big screen, being nominated for Oscars this month, the veil has been lifted for queer children who may enjoy it like I did. Hopefully, for them, the comfort of the show, the book, the movie, is not one that is enjoyed in the dark but instead, one that is bright and shared openly with an audience of millions.
And my own journey with my queerness, with my bisexuality, echoes this change, too. When I first found Wicked I was scared, desperately clinging to the solace it gave me as I awkwardly meandered through my first relationship with another girl. Now I write this in the house I live in with my wife, both out and living in our bisexual reality, with the cat and baby that complete us. We are a family. Looking back, a fifteen-year-old me would probably struggle to believe that people would love and see Wicked the way I had back then, and that the movie version would be fronted by a queer actress playing Elphaba who finds herself nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. I would be shocked that I could sit with queer teenagers who did not feel shame for their queerness as I had. Most poignantly however, I believe fifteen-year-old me would not believe that she would one day be able to sit on the sofa with her kid and her wife and share a love for the musical together—that as Wicked had a bright and unknowable future, so did she.
Mage Hadley is a writer and video editor living in England with her wife, kid, and cat. Her work focuses predominantly on bisexual issues and history.