Wicked is a musical with songs and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. The story is based on the best-selling novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, a parallel novel of L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the witches of the Land of Oz.

Wicked tells the story of Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West and her relationship with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Their friendship struggles through their opposing personalities and viewpoints, rivalry over the same love-interest, their reactions to the Wizard's corrupt government, and, ultimately, Elphaba's public fall from grace. The plot is set mostly before Dorothy's arrival from Kansas, and includes several references to well-known scenes and dialogue in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

The musical debuted on Broadway on October 30, 2003. It is produced by Universal Pictures and directed by Joe Mantello, with musical staging by Wayne Cilento. Its original stars were Idina Menzel as Elphaba, Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda, and Joel Grey as the Wizard. Although the production received mixed reviews and was panned by The New York Times, it has proved to be a favorite among patrons. The Broadway production's success spawned productions in Chicago, Los Angeles, London's West End, Tokyo, Melbourne, and Stuttgart, along with two North American tours that have visited over 30 cities in Canada and the United States.

Wicked has broken box office records around the world, holding weekly-gross-takings records in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London, and the record for biggest opening in the West End (£100,000 in the first hour on sale). The West End production has played to more than 1.4 million people, and the North American tour has been seen by over two million patrons. The show was nominated for ten 2004 Tony Awards, winning those for Best Actress, Scenic Design and Costume Design. It also won six Drama Desk Awards.

Development: Stephen Schwartz discovered the 1995 Maguire novel while on holiday and immediately realized its potential for dramatic adaptation. Schwartz met Maguire in Connecticut in 1998 and persuaded him to release the rights for a stage production.

Schwartz considered how best to condense the novel's complicated plot into a sensible script. To this end, he collaborated with Emmy Award-winning writer Winnie Holzman to develop the outline of the plot over the course of a year. While the draft followed Maguire's idea of retelling the story of the 1900 children's book from the perspective of its main villain, the storyline of the stage adaptation "goes far afield" from the novel. As Holzman observed in an interview with Playbill, "It was [Maguire's] brilliant idea to take this hated figure and tell things from her point of view, and to have the two witches be roommates in college, but the way in which their friendship develops – and really the whole plot – is different onstage." Schwartz justified the deviation, saying "Primarily we were interested in the relationship between Galinda – who becomes Glinda – and Elphaba...the friendship of these two women and how their characters lead them to completely different destinies." In addition to this change in focus, changes include Fiyero's appearance as the scarecrow, Elphaba's survival at the end, Nessarose's being wheelchair-bound instead of armless, and Doctor Dillamond not being murdered.

The book, lyrics, and score for the musical were developed through a series of readings. For these developmental workshops, Kristin Chenoweth, the Tony Award-winning actress whom Stephen Schwartz had in mind while composing the music for the character, joined the project as Glinda. Stephanie J. Block read the role of Elphaba before Idina Menzel was cast in the role in 2001. In early 2000, the creators recruited David Stone, the New York producer, to begin the transition to a full Broadway production. Joe Mantello was brought in as director, and by April 2003 he had assembled a full cast, and the show was prepared for a public production.

Tryout and Broadway Production: On May 28, 2003, Wicked opened for a pre-Broadway tryout at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. The cast included Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda, Idina Menzel as Elphaba, Robert Morse as the Wizard, Norbert Leo Butz as Fiyero and Carole Shelley as Madame Morrible. Stephanie J. Block also served as an ensemble member and understudy for Elphaba, while Laura Bell Bundy was understudy for Glinda. The musical staging was created by Wayne Cilento. Tony Award-winning designer Eugene Lee created a set and visual style for the production based on both W. W. Denslow's original illustrations for Baum's novels and Maguire's concept of the story being told through a giant clock. Costume designer Susan Hilferty created a "twisted Edwardian" style through more than 200 costumes, while lighting designer Kenneth Posner used more than 800 individual lights to give each of the 54 distinct scenes and locations "its own mood." The trial run closed on June 29 and extensive retooling for Broadway began. Elements of the book were rewritten and several songs underwent minor transformations. One song from the pre-Broadway version was scrapped before the musical opened on Broadway. Entitled "Which Way Is The Party?” it was replaced by "Dancing Through Life"; each was used to introduce the character Fiyero.

The Broadway production began previews at the George Gershwin Theatre on October 8, 2003, and officially opened on October 30. Most of the production team and original cast members remained when the show opened on Broadway, but Morse was replaced by Joel Grey, who was billed over the title. Other notable actors who have performed in the Broadway production of Wicked include, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Megan Hilty, Kate Reinders, Kendra Kassebaum, and Annaleigh Ashford as Glinda; Shoshana Bean, Eden Espinosa, Ana Gasteyer, Julia Murney, Stephanie J. Block, and Kerry Ellis as Elphaba; Taye Diggs, Joey McIntyre, David Ayers, Sebastian Arcelus as Fiyero; George Hearn, Ben Vereen, David Garrison, and Lenny Wolpe as The Wizard; Michelle Federer and Jenna Leigh Green as Nessarose; Christopher Fitzgerald, Randy Harrison, and Robb Sapp as Boq; Rue McClanahan, Carol Kane, Jayne Houdyshell, and Miriam Margolyes as Madame Morrible, and William Youmans, Sean McCourt, and Timothy Britten Parker as Doctor Dillamond.

Music: The score of Wicked is heavily thematic, bearing in some senses more resemblance to a film score than a musical's score. While many musicals' scores develop new motifs and melodies for each song with little overlap, Schwartz integrated a handful of leitmotifs throughout the production. Some of these motifs indicate irony – for example, when Galinda presents Elphaba with a "ghastly" hat in "Dancing Through Life", the score reprises a theme from "What is this Feeling?" a few scenes earlier, in which Elphaba and Glinda had espoused their mutual loathing.

Two musical themes in Wicked run throughout the score. Although Schwartz rarely reuses motifs or melodies from earlier works, the first – Elphaba's theme – came from The Survival of St. Joan, on which he worked as musical director. "I always liked this tune a lot and I never could figure out what to do with it," he remarked in an interview in 2004. The chord progression that he first penned in 1971 became a major theme of the show's orchestration. By changing the instruments that carry the motif in each instance, Schwartz enables the same melody to convey different moods. In the overture, the tune is carried by the orchestra's brass section, with heavy percussion. The result is, in Schwartz' own words, "like a giant shadow terrorising you". When played by the piano with some electric bass in "As Long As You're Mine", however, the same chord progression becomes the basis for a romantic duet. And with new lyrics and an altered bridge, the theme forms the core of the song "No One Mourns the Wicked" and its reprises.

Schwartz uses the "Unlimited" theme as the second major motif running through the score. Although not included as a titled song, the theme appears as an interlude in several of the musical numbers. In a tribute to Harold Arlen, who wrote the score for the 1939 film adaptation, the "Unlimited" melody incorporates the first seven notes of the song "Over the Rainbow." Schwartz included it as an inside joke as, "according to copyright law, when you get to the eighth note, then people can come and say, 'Oh you stole our tune.' And of course obviously it's also disguised in that it's completely different rhythmically. And it's also harmonized completely differently.... It's over a different chord and so on, but still it's the first seven notes of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'". Schwartz further obscured the motif's origin by setting it in a minor key in most instances. This also creates contrast in the songs in which it forms a part, for example in "Defying Gravity", which is written primarily in the key of D-flat major. In "The Wicked Witch of the East", however, when Elphaba finally uses her powers to let her sister walk, the "Unlimited" theme is played in a major key.

Critical Response: The Broadway production opened on October 30, 2003, to mixed reviews from theatre critics. While Menzel and Chenoweth received nearly unanimous praise for their performances as Elphaba and Glinda, the plot was derided as "muddled", and the sound quality in the massive Gershwin Theatre as "smearing". Despite these mixed reviews, interest in Wicked spread quickly by word-of-mouth, leading to record-breaking success at the box office, as described below. Speaking to The Arizona Republic in 2006, Schwartz commented, "What can I say? Reviews are reviews... I know we divided the critics. We didn't divide the audience [though], and that's what counts."

The West End production opened to a similarly ambivalent, if slightly more upbeat, critical reception. Although The Daily Telegraph described it as "at times... a bit of a mess," it praised Holzman's script, described Kenneth Posner's lighting design as "magical" and lauded Menzel and Helen Dallimore (as Glinda). The Guardian gave it three out of five stars and remarked on the competence of all the lead actors; however, it also complained that Wicked was "all too typical of the modern Broadway musical: efficient, knowing and highly professional but more like a piece of industrial product than something that genuinely touches the heart or mind".

Awards: Wicked was nominated for ten of the 2004 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Orchestration and twice for Best Leading Actress, for Menzel and Chenoweth. Menzel won the Best Actress award, and the show also won the Tony Awards for Best Scenic Design and Best Costume design, although it lost the Best Musical award to Avenue Q. In the same year, the show won six Drama Desk Awards out of eleven nominations, including in the Book, Director and Costume Design categories. The West End production was nominated for four Laurence Olivier Awards in 2007 but did not win any.

Financial Success: With a $14 million capitalization, the Broadway production earned back its entire initial investment by December 21, 2004. In its first year it grossed more than $56 million. The production, which was recently extended to September 27, 2008, has been playing to capacity crowds for almost every recent performance and grosses more than a million dollars every week according to reports published by Playbill. In the week ending January 1, 2006, Wicked broke the record, previously held by The Producers, for the highest weekly box office gross in Broadway history, earning $1,610,934. Wicked broke its own record in the week ending November 26, 2006, when it grossed a total of $1,715,155. The Broadway production broke its own record again in the week ending December 30, 2007, grossing $1,839,950. That week the show also broke its own weekly gross records in Los Angeles ($1,949,968), Chicago ($1,418,363), and on tour ($2,291,608), as the seven worldwide productions of the show grossed a collective $11.2 million.

The Broadway company of Wicked celebrated its 1,000th performance on March 23, 2006. The touring company reached 1,000 performances on August 15, 2007, while the Chicago company celebrated its 1,000th show on November 14, 2007.

Although West End theatres do not publish audited weekly grosses, the London production of Wicked claims to hold the record for highest reported one-week gross at £761,000, achieved in the week ending December 30, 2006. On June 23, 2008, the producers reported that over 1.4 million people had seen the London production since its opening, grossing over £50 million. The show has consistently been one of the two highest-grossing shows in the West End. --Courtesy of Wikipedia