It's a Wonderful Second Life

The Arcade is so Wicked

Everyone has heard of Oz and it's most notorious villainess, the Wicked Witch of the West. A house blown in from Kansas lands on her sister - a sister who's reign terrorized those of Munchkind Land. When Dorothy shows up from somewhere over the rainbow, the munchkins give her the precious ruby slippers off the dead witches feet in hopes that she might find the great and powerful Wizard of Oz to help her get home.

In Wicked the musical, the tables are turned. The Wicked Witch of the West, or Elphaba, is a lonely and solitary girl. She has munchkin parents, but is born with green skin that she is judged and hated for her entire life. When her and her sister (the beautiful but crippled) Nessarose go off to the university, Elphaba meets Glinda - a shallow and snobby diva - and eventually befriends her. Enter the dashing Fiyero, the atypical care free and handsome archetype, who Glinda falls in love with.

To some it up, bad things are happening in the land of Oz and Elphaba and Glinda discover why - and Elphaba decides to rise up against the evils of the Wizard in order to save the animal races from suppression, eventually joined by Fiyero who is not as shallow as he plays himself to be. Things go awry; there are twists and turns throughout the tale and for the most part the musical stays somewhat in tune to the book: Wicked, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. It puts an interesting twist on how the Lion became so cowardly, how Nessarose was really the wicked on, how Elphaba became known as the Wicked Witch,  and how the Scarecrow is really a botched spell performed by Elphaba in a desperate attempt to save Fiyero's (her lover) life.