Apart from the wonderful acting and the gloriously choreographed musical numbers, Jon M Chu’s Wicked is riveting for the extraordinary sets, thanks to production designer Nathan Crowley. “Nathan is a troublemaker,” Jon says with a laugh.
Speaking over a video call from Los Angeles, California (“We just got back from London last night”), the 45-year-old director says, “Nathan loves to build. He helped me understand why building was important. To touch and feel the world, to break the matt painting that we’re used to of Oz, to feel like this place actually exists, that Oz isn’t just a dream, was important.
Wicked, adapted from the wildly popular Broadway musical, tells the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Wicked is the story of two young women — the misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba and the popular and pretty Glinda, played by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, respectively. The cast also includes Michelle Yeoh as the inscrutable Madame Morrible and Jeff Goldblum, who Jon describes as “the ultimate storyteller”, playing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
L to R: Ariana Grande is Glinda and Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. Chu
| Photo Credit:
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
The sets, Jon says, had to feel lived in and real if the audience were going to believe the stakes involved. “If we’re going to believe that Elphaba and Glinda are fighting for this community, then we have to understand the culture of the community. In Munchkinland, they make the pink colour, honey, and sugar. The munchkins are looking for a leader to guide them to joy. If they get the wrong leader, their optimism can become hatred.”
Towards that end, Jon says they planted nine million tulips. “We created a real wizard head that moves and built a giant train weighing 60 tonnes. These things help these characters live in the real world.”
Jon saw Wicked before it went on Broadway. “I remember it blowing my mind. It used iconography from The Wizard of Oz, which I grew up with, yet changed the story. It looked at the story from a new perspective, from this question of how wickedness happens. Are you born wicked, or is wickedness thrust upon you? I love that question, and our answer is more questions.”
Maybe we are all a little wicked and a little good, Jon says. “Every day, we make choices, and hopefully, throughout our life, we make more choices to be good than be wicked. It’s complicated, not easy. There is no Yellow Brick Road that guides you to some person who will give you your heart’s desire. We have many uncomfortable conversations and listen to each other before we can get there.”
This is not the first musical rodeo for the Crazy Rich Asians director, who helmed In the Heights (2021), Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and Step Up 3D (2010). “There are a lot of challenges when doing a musical. There are technical elements, including the music itself. How does it sound? What stories are these songs telling?”
While rehearsing the scenes with the songs, Jon says he found new intentions for the songs. “It takes many steps and iterations to adjust that. Sometimes, we record music before we get to the scene, and when we get there, we have to go back to the music and see what needs to change to match the intention of these characters.”
It is the same with the choreography, Jon says. “Sometimes the actors have to learn movements just to get their muscle memory moving. It’s not a dance. It may not represent the motion they need to get into the song. Maybe you need to have no motion. Maybe Elphaba needs to start, ‘I’m not that Girl’ standing still. The song has to emerge, almost cracking from her. It can’t be perfect, but comes out of her as a necessity.”
These are the things they always have to leave room for, both in time and iteration, says Jon. “Also, when we get on set, how we execute a song ultimately depends on our choices for finding the right tone.”
L to R: Jeff Goldblum is The Wizard of Oz and Michelle Yeoh is Madam Morrible in WICKED, directed by Jon M. Chu
| Photo Credit:
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
In the end, Jon says, the technical side does not matter. “You have to master those things, but the technical side can’t be the thing that’s driving the story. That has to be the emotion. It is what we always said, ‘It’s the girls, stupid!’ No matter what you’re doing, it’s the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda and the nuances which will propel the story.”
In film as opposed to stage, Jon says, the camera is a powerful tool to get up close with the actors. “We focused on that aspect. The other stuff would come along with it, as long as it emerged from the intention of where the characters were in the story.”
Jon is proud of the way his leads did not do an imitation of Broadway versions of Elphaba and Glinda. “Even though these characters are iconic and timeless, and people know them, Cynthia and Ariana were able to play with the characters and explore them further. Cynthia singing ‘something has changed within me, something is not the same’ in ‘Defying Gravity’, at that moment, in that time, means something different.”
The line is relevant today, Jon says. “Maybe it feels like after COVID and the lockdown, where we all have this uncomfortable feeling, and we don’t know what the next chapter in the story may be.”
In the scenes between Elphaba and Glinda, they try to figure out new ways to look at their songs, Jon says. “The main lyric in ‘What is this Feeling’ is loathing. We had many conversations about that song. Is it loathing, or is it that you resist the person who will change the rest of your life? The song is not about hatred. It’s just about resisting change. Those little nuances go a long way in a story like this and is why it is speaking to people now.”
Wicked is currently running in theatres
Published – November 29, 2024 06:08 pm IST
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