Turning 'Wicked' into a musical was a tricky task

Almost from the moment L. Frank Baum wrote it, more than a century ago, "The Wizard of Oz" has been rewritten, retold, reimagined, and reinvented. And knowing that, says Winnie Holzman, made it easier to take on the task of adapting one such reinvention -Gregory Maguire's novel "Wicked" - into a musical.

"I felt we were part of a wonderful continuum," says Holzman, who wrote the musical's book, or script, "part of a long line of people who were responding to such a deep, resonant piece of art."

Even before the touring version comes to Boston this week for a nearly sold-out run at the Opera House, many potential audience members have read the 1995 novel, seen the musical on Broadway, or heard the songs.

Many more have gleaned the basic premise, the retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West.

But there's an even more daunting bit of shared knowledge out there, Holzman says: the deep, devoted, ubiquitous memory of the 1939 MGM movie of "The Wizard of Oz."

"It's kind of a sacred object," she says. "I felt this incredible sense of responsibility - we all did."

Indeed, Holzman and "Wicked" composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz found themselves challenged by working around the well-known details of the movie - not just to avoid violating copyright or irritating fans, but to satisfy their own sense of the project's deepest purpose.

Schwartz says the team tried to think of the movie as "a documentary," meaning that nothing could contradict the "facts" as seen on film. Well, maybe one thing - the movie has those famous ruby slippers, but MGM had actually changed their color from the original silver in order to show off its then-novel Technicolor. "Wicked" the musical, like "Wicked" the novel, goes back to Baum for its footwear.

Still, avoiding contradictions was "a huge thing," Holzman says. "We talked about it constantly. And I knew how the public felt, because I knew how I felt."

Holzman sometimes worried more about her responsibility to the movie version, she says, than about her obligations to Maguire's novel, which turns "The Wizard of Oz" on its head by making the "wicked" Elphaba its protagonist. That premise, Holzman says repeatedly, was "brilliant" - but it was also only a jumping-off point.

"His focus was different," Holzman says of Maguire. "He was, actually, writing a novel. We were trying to delight an audience, and to pull an audience along through a complicated tale."

What helped her find her own way to tell the story, Holzman says, was partly Maguire's faith in her and in Schwartz, best known for "Pippin" and "Godspell"; Schwartz had the initial inspiration to turn "Wicked" into a Broadway musical, then wrote its lyrics and music."Gregory kind of felt that he was in good hands," she says. "He knew we weren't there to change things for change's sake. We were there to adapt it for the stage."

What endures from the novel, Holzman and Schwartz agree, is what Holzman calls the "very brilliant idea" that "you think you know the story, but you don't know the story. You only know the part of the story that you were told, and not this whole other story that's been suppressed."

The novel, Schwartz says, explores the complexity of good and evil in part by asking whether the Wicked Witch is truly wicked or Glinda the Good truly good. But "the show is much more about the truth being concealed," Schwartz says, "the layers of truth."

Holzman says that theme resonates "especially for our times, but really for all time."

What also fascinated the creative team, though, was the way Maguire's story dances and weaves around the original narrative - of both Baum's novel and the film.

"It was much more important to me and to Winnie than to Gregory," Schwartz says, "to explain and show where all the iconic elements and characters of 'The Wizard of Oz' came from - to weave them in." In the musical, we see what cowed the Cowardly Lion, tested the mettle of the Tin Woodman, and scared the Scarecrow. Oh, and the little dog, too.

"I always like things like that," Schwartz says. "The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern trick. ... I'm an Agatha Christie aficionado, with clues hidden in plain sight. You should hear in the audience some kind of excited whisper. That's part of the fun."

The composer had his own kind of fun, too, by weaving in sly allusions to Harold Arlen's unforgettable film score. "One of the first things I did was the homage to 'Over the Rainbow,"' he says. "But I only used seven notes - that's part of the joke."

He thinks of those musical references, he says, "like the Ninas in a Hirschfeld" - signature motifs in a drawing that amuse without distracting. And, he notes, "they're really disguised, changed either rhythmically or harmonically."

Ultimately, like any adaptation, "Wicked" the musical evolved - especially once Holzman and Schwartz, with director Joe Mantello, started hearing and seeing it in workshops with the cast. For her, Holzman says, "Wicked" became the story of an unlikely but enduring friendship between Glinda and Elphaba.

"When we started to see those two characters interacting," she says, "the richness of that friendship was so fascinating and so adorable. Not adorable as in 'Isn't that cute,' but in the sense that you adore them. So that relationship literally expanded as we were watching them. Our joke was .. 'It's the girls, stupid.' When it was about the girls, the show became very exciting.".

That's hardly surprising from a writer who, before "Wicked," was best known for the richly dimensional female characters she created for television, in "My So-Called Life" and "Once and Again." But it's also, Holzman says, something she came to believe was always integral to Oz.

"There is something at the heart of 'The Wizard of Oz' that is about feminine empowerment," Holzman says. "I never set out to do that as a goal - write a musical about feminine empowerment. But the wizard, the male character, is a charlatan and a fraud. The witches have real power."

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedyglobe.com.

c.2006 The Boston Globe