Wicked review

Yet within those confines, Cynthia Erivo as misunderstood green witch Elphaba and Ariana Grande as best frenemy Galinda still manage to deliver a couple of really strong leading performances. Grande has a ball bringing the bitchiness, although there’s a latent naivete there, too. Erivo, as you’d expect, properly acts. She’s responsible for the moments – few, and exceedingly welcome – when you actually feel something: her embarrassment at the Ozdust Ball, her defensiveness, her defiance. Without her, it would be all surface. The pair sing brilliantly, with two very distinct voices – Grande’s high and light, Erivo’s richer and smoother – which achieve the same strange unity that Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth’s did in the original production. 

Jeff Goldblum does the impossible and makes the Wizard an interesting role, tossing his trademark unpredictability into it. In fact, it’s good casting all around, and few of the actors are who you’d expect in the roles, with the exception of swoonsome pretty boy Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero.

When people say they hate musicals, there’s a good chance that one of the ones they’re thinking of is Wicked. This film will do nothing to dissuade them. Chu has created something for the fans, and to inspire some new Wicked faithful. Despite a few swooping camera shots and digital effects, it plays out like a massive stage production; it even seems to expect applause at the end of songs. It’s no surprise that the film – the end result of almost a century of inheritance, going right back to L Frank Baum’s books – sometimes struggles to establish its own identity. But it doesn’t really matter. Dragged out of production hell, cannily cast and cleaving to the stuff that works, this is Wicked made good.