Wicked review

[alobear]

Wicked wasn't remotely what I was expecting. I thought it would be broad comedy of the Robert Rankin style. What I got was epic and tragic with huge amounts of depth. It's main themes are politics, religion and philosophy and it frequently had me thinking really, really hard.

The opening section, which describes Elphaba's family, birth and childhood wasn't engaging at all – the characters were cardboard cutouts, the story was flat and there was little emotive effect. But, once she went off to university, it really picked up and became a fascinating exploration of how society and major life events can alter someone's personality, motivations and moral compass.

There were a couple of random jumps of several years, which made the narrative seem a little disjointed, and the section at the end that followed the events of the film seemed rather tacked on a contrived, but it was largely extremely well written and compelling – hence managing to read all 500 pages in three days!