The clearest candidate for America’s favourite fairy story could be The Great Wizard of Oz. The writer L. Frank Baum set the novel, revealed in 1900, in a fantasy land that shares core American values: self-sufficiency, private reinvention, the exploration of wider frontiers. The e-book’s younger heroine, Dorothy, is whisked away to Oz, the place she befriends magical creatures, thwarts a witch, and leans on her newfound energy and buddies with a view to return dwelling. For Dorothy, it’s a land of empowerment and risk; for Baum—who perpetuated manifest future’s warped beliefs in his different writings—and his many readers, it was an otherworldly illustration of the American expanse, a spot they maybe wished to see for themselves.
Baum’s novel and its sequels have been main literary phenomena of their day. However Ozpersists primarily by the books’ many variations, which established the sequence’ enduring iconography. Baum’s world is greatest remembered because it has appeared on-screen, particularly within the 1939 musical movie starring Judy Garland as Dorothy: a spot bursting with songs similar to “Over the Rainbow” and visuals such because the yellow brick street, which have change into the franchise’s most memorable options. And with The Great Wizard of Oz’s 1956 entry into the general public area, permitting for brand new, noncanonical works, subsequent generations have iterated on these hallmarks to inform Ozstories of their very own.
No transformation has been extra important to Ozs longevity than Depraved, the revisionist origin story of the Depraved Witch of the West, one among Baum’s most recognizable villains. Primarily based on the writer Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel of the identical title, Depraved’s prominence is up there with that of its supply textual content, and yesterday’s launch of (the primary a part of the musical’s extremely anticipated movie adaptation will undoubtedly broaden its attain. Key to Depraved’s success—and its means to bridge Ozs previous and future—is its canny understanding of what, precisely, makes that world work so properly.
Artists throughout genres and mediums have, for many years, discovered nice storytelling potential in Baum’s characters and mythology. However the mode that Ozhas continued to lend itself to greatest is musical theater, a style predicated on suspension of disbelief and thus well-suited to conveying Ozs odd earnestness. The Wizard of Oz’s 1903 Broadway musical debut was a success, firing up calls for for extra tales, which prompted Baum to jot down a complete of 13 sequels to his e-book.
The Garland movie, impressed partly by the success of the musical, cemented Ozs connection to music, however it was The Wiz that introduced it again to the theater, in 1974. The latter was the franchise’s first majorly reenvisioned entry, a celebration of Black tradition that took Dorothy’s story to the Nineteen Seventies. Throughout its four-year run on Broadway, The Wiz earned a number of Tony wins; the (much less well-received) movie adaptation notably starred the then-superstars Diana Ross and Michael Jackson as Dorothy and the Scarecrow, respectively. The Wiz confirmed that Baum’s novel could possibly be efficiently reinterpreted inside a up to date body, and its story and characters up to date accordingly. This transposition didn’t sacrifice the core imagery and themes—Dorothy nonetheless fights off flying monkeys and dons magic slippers to make it again dwelling—however as an alternative retained and even grew their cultural energy.
Ozhasn’t translated as properly into dramatic, adult-oriented settings, regardless of quite a few writers’ and filmmakers’ efforts. The 1985 Disney movie Return to Oz reintroduced the world by using lesser-known characters from Baum’s later books; though it exhibited Ozs compelling peculiarities, similar to sentient furnishings and disembodied human heads, it was a crucial and box-office failure, deemed too darkish for younger viewers. Science-fiction authors together with Robert Heinlein, Philip José Farmer, and even Stephen King wrote tales incorporating Ozthat obtained combined evaluations. The Syfy miniseries Tin Man and NBC’s one-season flop Emerald Metropolis additionally principally didn’t resonate. Solely Maguire’s Depraved: The Life and Instances of the Depraved Witch of the West—a story laden with adultery, homicide, and slavery—has taken maintain of the favored creativeness. Depraved has change into the modern Oztext, maybe even superseding Baum’s work: It carries ahead the unique novels’ mixture of campy magic and violent spectacle whereas bringing in trendy literary themes. Maguire’s greatest change was recasting Baum’s antagonist because the antihero, reframing a simple villain as a girl misunderstood by her friends—an expertise seemingly extra related to in the present day’s readers than Dorothy’s less complicated story of excellent versus evil.
Depraved used Ozs whimsy and weirdness to deepen Baum’s seemingly unambiguous world, one strictly divided between proper and incorrect. The fundamental premise was a strong one: What if the Depraved Witch of the West wasn’t so dangerous in spite of everything, and what if the Wizard—and the seemingly good society he oversaw—was the true risk? In his retelling, Maguire, an Ozfan since childhood, named Baum’s one-dimensional and green-skinned villain Elphaba Thropp; he additionally gave her an advanced parentage, a soapy romantic arc, and a dorm room. She attended Shiz College alongside a various unfold of colourful, slang-talking Ozians. And, creating a darker facet to Baum’s fanciful creation, Maguire additionally gave Elphaba a political motivation for wreaking havoc on her homeland: the oppression of its speaking animals. However Maguire’s most essential addition was the school friendship between Elphaba and Glinda the Good Witch (one of many Depraved Witch’s sworn enemies in Baum’s novel); the musical turns that bond into its emotional core.
The 2003 Broadway adaptation lent a number of the Garland-led movie’s sparkle to Maguire’s story and made it acceptable for an all-ages viewers. By foregrounding Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship, the musical emphasised Baum’s thematic curiosity in friendship and self-discovery. Theatergoers may relate to Glinda’s perkiness and yearning for reputation and Elphaba’s fish-out-of-water awkwardness the identical manner they may, in watching The Wizard of Oz or studying Baum’s novel, think about themselves in Dorothy’s footwear, looking for dwelling. By simplifying Maguire’s plot, the musical higher captured the fairy-tale feeling of Baum’s novel. Since its opening, its attraction has proved common—Depraved has change into the second-highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time.
Its success has additionally translated offstage in a very generative vogue. Depraved is now the jumping-off level for quite a few fanworks—a meta growth, as a result of the present itself is a fanwork of a fanwork. Fan fiction primarily based on the musical has change into a style unto itself; many works think about a queer relationship between Elphaba and Glinda. Showstoppers similar to Glinda’s bubbly “Well-liked” and Elphaba’s anthemic “Defying Gravity” are well-orchestrated articulations of the present’s ethos, inspiring beginner {and professional} renditions alike. Enamored artists and theatergoers usually reimagine and revisit Depraved, as do budding Broadway lovers who haven’t attended an in-person manufacturing: An abundance of bootleg recordings has made Depraved one among musical theater’s most accessible entry factors. It’s additionally a gateway into the broader world of Oz. Depraved and its personal iterations—together with its long-awaited movie adaptation, which has already change into a cultural occasion—work for a similar causes Baum’s unique story did: They conjure a world that’s buoyant, relatable, and unforgettable.
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