Wicked production thrills the globe

By Peter Burdon

Back when Dorothy was not yet a gleam in her father’s eye, Glinda and Elphaba were a couple of college girls in Oz who discovered they had magical powers. Elphaba, green-skinned and maligned, used her powers spitefully and acquired a reputation for wickedness, in contrast to Glinda’s kindness. This is Wicked.

Lucy Durak scored the plum role of Glinda, definitively portrayed on Broadway by the impossibly pert Kristin Chenoweth, while Anthony Callea got the fun part of Boq, a wealthy munchkin who’s hopelessly in love with Glinda, who’s sadly unaware of his yearnings.

I honestly stopped breathing when I found I had the part, Durak said.

I mean, everyone in the industry knows that Wicked is going to be huge, and for people who are relatively young like Anthony and me to get chances like this, when you think of how many great singers there are out there, is just such a great opportunity.

And the sales so far have been amazing, so it looks like it’ll run for years, and that’s pretty great, to be getting a regular income for a change!

The world of the main-stage musical is a big step, too, for Anthony Callea.

I did Rent last year in Perth and it got a great reception, but Wicked is, like, on a completely different level, he said.

It’s been so amazingly successful that there’s a lot of expectations on you going into it, and it’s like that for everyone in the production.

Like my character, Boq, it’s not just the songs, it’s also really important that you make the character believable. Boq is in love with Glinda but gets involved with Elphaba’s sister hoping to get close to the two friends, and it leads to all sorts of funny situations, even though he’s a bit tragic.

Durak agees. It’s so important to make sure you get the emotion into the characters because everyone knows the story of the Wizard of Oz, and even though Wicked is a new story, people still feel connected to it because they have such a lot of affection for the original, she said.

Everyone remembers the movie, everyone’s read the book, and a lot of people have seen the musical. And when you’re in the performing arts in Australia, it’s so exciting because so many icons have done the roles before.

Like Glinda, look at the people who’ve performed that role. Nancye Hayes, who’s one of the strongest supporters of young Australian singers and has been wonderful to me, she played Glinda on the stage and even directed the last revival. That’s a really special connection for me.

Callea said he is looking forward to the challenge of bringing Wicked to Australian audiences.

TV is pretty unforgiving but there’s also a lot you can cover up on the small screen, he said.

It’s very different on the stage, and that’s been one of the hardest things for me, having done a lot of television first. But I’ve learned a lot from the stage work I’ve done.

Rent was great, and I also had a part in the Sydney production of the opera Dead Man Walking which was something different again. But Wicked tops them all.

With the biggest advance sales in Australian stage history, Wicked is the best thing going.

info: Wicked is poised to open at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre, before touring nationally. To book phone 1300 WICKED.