The clearest candidate for America’s favourite fairy story could be The Great Wizard of Oz. The creator L. Frank Baum set the novel, printed in 1900, in a fantasy land that shares core American values: self-sufficiency, private reinvention, the exploration of wider frontiers. The guide’s younger heroine, Dorothy, is whisked away to Oz, the place she befriends magical creatures, thwarts a witch, and leans on her newfound power and associates as a way to return residence. 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 needed to see for themselves.
Baum’s novel and its sequels had been main literary phenomena of their day. However Ouncespersists primarily via the books’ many variations, which established the collection’ 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 equivalent to “Over the Rainbow” and visuals such because the yellow brick highway, which have grow to be the franchise’s most memorable options. And with The Great Wizard of Oz’s 1956 entry into the general public area, permitting for brand spanking new, noncanonical works, subsequent generations have iterated on these hallmarks to inform Ouncesstories of their very own.
No transformation has been extra very important to Ouncess longevity than Depraved, the revisionist origin story of the Depraved Witch of the West, one in every of Baum’s most recognizable villains. Based mostly on the creator Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel of the identical identify, 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 capability to bridge Ouncess previous and future—is its canny understanding of what, precisely, makes that world work so nicely.
Artists throughout genres and mediums have, for many years, discovered nice storytelling potential in Baum’s characters and mythology. However the mode that Ounceshas continued to lend itself to greatest is musical theater, a style predicated on suspension of disbelief and thus well-suited to conveying Ouncess odd earnestness. The Wizard of Oz’s 1903 Broadway musical debut was successful, firing up calls for for extra tales, which prompted Baum to write down a complete of 13 sequels to his guide.
The Garland movie, impressed partially by the success of the musical, cemented Ouncess connection to music, but it surely 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 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 recent 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 residence—however as a substitute retained and even grew their cultural energy.
Ounceshasn’t translated as nicely 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 Ouncess compelling peculiarities, equivalent to sentient furnishings and disembodied human heads, it was a vital 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 Ouncesthat obtained combined critiques. The Syfy miniseries Tin Man and NBC’s one-season flop Emerald Metropolis additionally largely did not 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 grow to be the modern Ouncestext, even perhaps 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 an easy villain as a lady misunderstood by her friends—an expertise probably extra related to at present’s readers than Dorothy’s less complicated story of excellent versus evil.
Depraved used Ouncess whimsy and weirdness to deepen Baum’s seemingly unambiguous world, one strictly divided between proper and fallacious. The essential premise was a strong one: What if the Depraved Witch of the West wasn’t so dangerous in any case, and what if the Wizard—and the seemingly good society he oversaw—was the true menace? In his retelling, Maguire, an Ouncesfan 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, growing a darker aspect 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 necessary addition was the faculty 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 might relate to Glinda’s perkiness and yearning for recognition and Elphaba’s fish-out-of-water awkwardness the identical means they might, in watching The Wizard of Oz or studying Baum’s novel, think about themselves in Dorothy’s sneakers, looking for residence. 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 grow to be the second-highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time.
Its success has additionally translated offstage in a very generative style. 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 grow to be a style unto itself; many works think about a queer relationship between Elphaba and Glinda. Showstoppers equivalent to Glinda’s bubbly “Widespread” and Elphaba’s anthemic “Defying Gravity” are well-orchestrated articulations of the present’s ethos, inspiring novice {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 in every of 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 grow to be 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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