Review: Wicked is a great musical with standout leads

Touring productions of Broadway or West End musicals can be a bit of a hit or miss, a lot of the times depending on the visiting cast. Wicked, playing at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, is a resounding hit, featuring two superb leads, a small but charming ensemble, a beautiful set and gorgeous looking costumes.

Written by Stephen Schwartz (previous credits include Godspell and Pippin), Wicked the musical is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, a spin-off of the children’s fiction classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by American author L. Frank Baum. This back story to the friendship between Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West is adapted for the stage by Winnie Holzman.

The show opens at the point when the Wicked Witch of the West is announced as dead. Glinda then recalls how they – Elphaba and Galinda as she was known when younger – first met as sorcery students at Shiz University. They cannot be more different. Galinda is blonde and popular (albeit a bit ditzy) while Elphaba is feared and shunned because she was born with green skin.

But despite their differences the two young women eventually become best friends and it’s through this friendship we learn how they became who they were in The Wizard of Oz story (of the 1939 movie).

Jacqueline Hughes is superb as Elphaba. Despite being unpopular – even with her father – her Elphaba never wallows in self-pity and is confident, intelligent and deadpan from the word go. And when she belts – and what a voice – she hits all the (top) notes with control, power and emotions, delivering The Wizard and I, No Good Deed and For Good (duet with Glinda) to a rapturous audience. And her show-stopping number Defying Gravity? Hughes totally kills it.