Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cumming had just begun their Tony Awards co-hosting duties Sunday night when the former’s signature show came up.
After informing the bedazzled attendees that the 2014-2015 season was the most successful in Broadway’s history, Cumming riffed “And you’ll be delighted to know….”
” ‘Wicked’ is still running,” Chenoweth horned in with sly relish.
“Popular, it’s still very popular,” Cumming sang, teasing one of the blockbuster show’s hit songs.
Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s 2003 adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” is very popular indeed, in ways that defied — if not gravity — expectations of shows about strong female characters.
The show imagines the backstories of the two witches made famous by “The Wizard of Oz.”
In its first decade, “Wicked” was Broadway’s highest-grossing show for nine consecutive years. Nearly 16 million people have seen one of its touring shows, which began in 2005. In its entirety — Broadway, North American and international tours — the musical has grossed over $4 billion.
So an early nod to the musical made sense on a history-making night at the . It was the first time a female team triumphed for their work on a musical when Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori won best original score for best musical winner “Fun Home.” Also victorious: director Marianne Elliott for “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,” which won best play.
Currently, the of “Wicked” is ensconced at the Buell Theatre (through July 5).
Chenoweth and Idina Menzel famously played the opposites who loathed at first sight when they were forced to be roomies at Shiz University. But as powerful as those two performers are, it is safe to say after 12 years of the show’s continuing success, it is the characters that endure.
In the Buell show, Carrie St. Louis and Alyssa Fox play well off each other as popular girl Galinda who’ll become Glinda, and green-tinted Elphaba, the maltreated but gifted daughter of the governor of Munchkinland. One’s blond and chirpy. The other’s green and emotionally armored.
“I tell people I get paid to play myself,” St. Louis says on the phone, then laughs. “Everybody can find a bit of Glinda and a bit of Elphaba in themselves.
Fox agrees. “I see a lot of myself in Elphaba,” she says. “I was picked on in middle school for being really thin and awkward and I wasn’t much of a social butterfly. I loved reading books and keeping to myself. It’s interesting to be able to put your own personality into a role, especially one as complicated as Elphaba.”
The many opportunities to see oneself in the story is one of the show’s draws.
“There are so many themes for people to relate to — bullying, being a strong female in the world, finding friendship through differences,” says Fox.
St. Louis says she comes off stage and will ask little fans if they are a Glinda or an Elphaba. Often how they’re clad will give them away. ” But quite a few feel they are both,” she says.
International spell
It is the emotional spells cast by “Wicked” that have made it a cultural phenomenon.
“It means different things to different people. I think that has helped it in all these years, and in all these countries,” says David Stone who, along with produced “Wicked.”
Stone has been a champion of works that feature — celebrate even — strong female characters. He produced Off-Broadway hit, “The Vagina Monologues,” which spurred a movement. He shepherded Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s “Next to Normal” about a woman with bipolar disorder. That duo’s follow-up, “If/Then,” tells the story of a 40-something woman who moves to New York City and what happens when she follows two different paths.
“I was raised by a very strong woman,” Stone replies when asked the reason for this throughline.
“I very much believe that women’s stories are more interesting, more complicated, more untold. I don’t say that only because women buy a lot of theater tickets. I say it because that’s what I’m interested in exploring.”
Just the start for DCPA
If the Tony Awards victories and telecast made public what appears to be a sea change regarding women’s roles in theater — creative as well as on-stage — the Denver Center for the Performing Arts was already headed there.
Come the 2015-2016 season, the Broadway division will continue the theme. A bright 5-year-old named Matilda kicks things off in the season’s opener
Menzel will star in the launch of the national tour of ” at the Buell (opening Oct. 13). And the season ends next year with another Tony-winning work, about singer-songwriter Carole King.
The will be just as busy. In the fall, the company will stage Brit playwright Nina Raine’s family drama “Tribes.” Early in 2016, it will world-premiere Tanya Saracho’s “Fade” and Theresa Rebeck’s “The Nest,” works that came out of February’s 10th Colorado New Play Summit.
Meanwhile, for the next few weeks, two “Wicked” witches will continue to galvanize audiences in a musical that shows no signs of melting away.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
