I liked both the book and the musical for the entities they were. The only issue I had with the musical was chiefly to do with the musical's book writers wanting to be cute about merging two of the characters from the story in with the scarecrow and the tin woodsman, but even that issue has more to do with the lack of synchronicity of the timing of this story and the story that Dorothy is living in parallel in Act II. But it's minor enough that I can almost ignore it. Almost. :)

It's one of the rare cases where the author is fine with the changes to their story

That...is a very valid point.

@@MusicalHell Can you do a few next At The Sources on(whichever order is fine with me): 1. The Secret Garden 2. Doctor Zhivago (both are by composer Lucy Simon) 3. The Baker's Wife(which is based on a french film of the same name) 4. Spring Awakening(which is based on a play of the same name by Frank Wedekind) 5. Zorba(which is based on both the novel and the Anthony Quinn film of the same name) 6. Giant(based on the novel of the same name. Plus, the musical is by Michael John LaChiusa, the same composer of Hello Again) 7. Mary Poppins(perhaps a play by play between the books, the Disney film, AND the Disney Stage Musical developed by Cameron Mackintosh) 8. Dear Evan Hansen The Junior Novel 9. 13 (which are bit of reversals, with a junior novel being developed after the original source material premiered on stage) 10. Candide (maybe do it as a show that constantly changes with each iteration(like with Rags, Chess, etc.) 11. The King and I(based on the highly fictitious(and borderline colonialist) memoirs by Anna Leonowens) 12. Flower Drum Song(from the novel to the first iteration from 1958, to the new version by Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang(who also co wrote the libretto for Adia, wrote the full libretto for Tarzan the Musical, AND wrote the script and lyrics of the "Play with a Musical" Soft Power with composer(and additional lyricist) Jeanine Tesori(Fun Home, Caroline or Change, Violet, Shrek the Musical, etc.) 13. Pacific Overtures(based on Commodore Perry's exhibition to Japan, presented as "Japanese playwright's version of an American musical" through kabuki theatre)(which also describes the "musical" portion of Soft Power, being a Chinese musical from 50 years in the future that retells today's American history with the 2016 election through a cracked lens) 14. Miss Saigon(based on the Opera Madame Butterfly) (maybe all five of these as perhaps a discussion of portrayals of Asian history and culture in American/British theatre, with an emphasis on how the quality of the writing and the narratives either disband or reinforce societally conceived notions of Asian racial stereotypes(Miss Saigon(from it's conception to the changes made to 25th Anniversary Revival) being one of the biggest contender for tense(albeit "controversial") discussions on the matter, in my opinion) Sorry if this sounds to overbearing(regardless of how much time you actually have being at home with the pandemic and all), but I really like these analysis you make, and I thought I shoot SOME ideas. :) Bonus ideas(though these are plays not musicals): 1. The Curious Incident of The Dog and The Nighttime(which I saw in London, and which stars a character I truly resinated with as someone who is high functionally autistic) 2. Frankenstein, adaptation by Nick Dear(which(by telling the story from the Creature's perspective, rather than Victor's) fundamentally inverts the themes of Mary Shelly's book, about the dangers of toying with nature, into those of the consequences of avoiding nurturing and loving you're creation(children) from birth(and yes, this is the version that stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, who alternated the roles of Victor and The Creature on different nights)

“Bubbly eulogy” I see what you did there

@@michaelwilliamybarra2409 Diva already covered Miss Saigon. I would have suggested Chicago and the real life trial behind it.

I legit had an epiphany the other day when I realized that, when Glinda shows the audience the circumstances around Elphaba's conception, it's information only SHE was privy to, as we learn towards the end of the show. So your comment is definitely on point!

No kidding it would make sense that glinda would cut out all the gory details of her former friends life story

Oh god

I would as well.

Yes. Where are my tickets.

The Witch from Into the Woods and Elphaba are basically the same character anyways

@@Quackervoltz I don’t know about that. Elphaba seems different from that witch.

The books got weirder and squickier than that.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like a book you wanna read if you're going through puberty.

God, I'm glad that I'm not the only one who was disturbed by this aaha.

Same

Dom Elaineous Me too.

Dom Elaineous yep

Loved the musical, couldn’t stand the book. I’m an avid reader & this book was so bad I could only get halfway thru it.

@@deanacollins3508 Omg, I feel you. I only read the whole thing because I used to be one of those people who felt obligated to finish a book once I started it. I found the writing really pretentious and condescending, like the author was using big words just to show he knows what they mean, not to add to the story. I also found the constant refrain of Elphaba being an enigma super annoying and sexist.

You mean 180 right?

Same I read the book because my mom wouldn't take me to see it when it was performed near our home town and then when she came back she said, "Yeah, I should have taken you." So essentially I read the book out of spite when I was far too young to read it and finally saw the musical (on Broadway which was awesome!) and it was soooo different.

Baal, God of Rain Yes

I read the book when I was 11 and mostly I was confused

I couldn’t even finish the book. I won a copy while I was waiting in line for tickets to the musical.

That is my view too. Honestly, the MGM movie changed the Wizard of Oz book too and that's for most people the default version (for some people the most recognizable story on Earth). And the earlier attempts to adapt Oz to the stage or screen were even more divergent from both the Wizard of Oz than even Wicked is from its book.

I like hearing that was his response-- I like when artists are humble.

That was an appropriate reaction. I'm 15 and just finished the book yesterday and, sure I loved it, but I wasn't ready for the Philosophy Club!

*gay love conquers all

Yeah because the musical’s ending is totally happy what with a miserable woman who felt alone getting murdered so a government can catch her sister, the wizard realizing he killed his one and only daughter and like the video joke will kill himself, Glinda think her best friend is dead because of her and her actions, and Elphaba and Fiyero having to forever leave their homeland unless they want to risk death.

@@ihvojd If you read a little more closely, you'll see that I didn't say that the musical has a happy ending. But compared to the source book, the musical does end more happily.

Or in the musical version: never judge a book by it’s cover.

@@willlyon7129 More like, don't judge a book by its musical.

Can't find it anywhere. Have a link?

Yes, please share!

Please do!

sebastian banguis I thought it’d be online! Check out my Twitter feed @Meaghandances I just posted it.

Grace Wenzel it’s on my Twitter feed now @Meaghandances it was in the Stephen Schwartz biography I read.

He's described as having shit colored skin 🤷🏾‍♂️

@@princeorii7815 that's a choice

@@princeorii7815 yeah by the racist white people

Book Fiyero seems to be Native American or Polynesian. Musical Fiyero is Book Avaric, who's implied as white

Low-key he was better too

I guess Maguire just forgot

This is exactly what I was thinking in response to the "show of hands" question haha. I'm glad someone else thought the same thing.

Censoring an unwed pregnancy in a story, that's....really silly of him.

J'acob Albers Especially when we had done Footloose a few years before, which has a whole number called “The Girl Gets morning Around.” At that point I think he was overly careful as the year before the local Christian radio station had said our choir was singing about booze when the song was about blues

@@nolanmcbride5653 That is so stupid.

Bro what?

that doesn't seem to line up with his attitude toward the musical at all

@@QuikVidGuy The response I got was not from Maguire himself, but from multiple fans on a discussion group devoted to his work.

Can we hear the theory?

@@Quackervoltz There wasn't much to it other than that. (SPOILERS for the book.) Elphaba's parents were in a polyamorous relationship with Turtle Heart when she was a baby. He was a glass blower and created a ball in which baby Elphaba saw the future and the shoes (the not-ruby slippers) that are later enchanted to help Nessarose walk. He is sacrificed by the superstitious Munchkinlanders in a manner that makes him resemble a scarecrow. Turtle Heart was a Quadling and this leads Elphaba to spend her childhood on a religious mission to Quadling Country. Near the end, when Elphaba sees the Scarecrow approaching the castle in Dorothy's group, she assumes he's Fiyero back from the dead and is disappointed that he's not. I thought it would be interesting if the Scarecrow was really a different significant figure from her past, but she didn't realize it. A lot of stuff in the novel is left deliberately ambiguous.

Let's hope the film adaptation casts a non-white actor in the role.

@@EHH246 there will be a film adaptation!?

​@@heynae2016 It's in development hell at the moment.

@@EHH246 And has been for years. :(

Personally speaking, I saw the musical with a black Fiero and I thought it was an intentional brilliant move. (I found out later he was understudy to a white guy) How he and Elphaba related to each other made a little more sense, I can’t really describe it but I definitely appreciated the performance.

Me too, too true. I tried-I read Wicked, I read Lost, I read Son of A Witch. I should've learned. I bought his Nutcracker and After Alice books and I haven't really read them, but I regret getting them. Part of me wonders about the Snow White book, Mirror Mirror, but no!

A lot of his characters do act as if they're suffering from depression.

He was originally going to write a non-fiction biography on a historical figure (Stalin? I think?) before he switched gears and wrote Wicked. Make of that what you will

It was disney/abc who adapted Confessions.

Agree. Confessions is his best, most enjoyable book imo. The Snow white one was impossibly dry with random Italian (i think?) thrown in. Wicked was up and down. I have the rest of the series but have had no desire to read them. Personally, I love what the musical did.

plus one star Maguire once said he wrote the novel to "deepen her [the Witch's] mystery." So her life is so mysterious, even she doesn't know exactly what happened in it.

there was also an animated Wizard of Oz TV show with a cubist looking art style in the 60's

That's a little more divorced from that source material and seems to be its own thing. There's also an "Oz Kids" show, but I have only heard of it and it sounds like it borrows from the books for the most part. I'm just saying, there's way too much of the franchise fixated on being the 30's movie. I want to see more things that are based off the original books and do their own thing as a result.

I can't help but agree. *Return to Oz: delightfully weird mashing-together of the second and third books, but Disney actually paid for the rights for the Ruby Slippers to connect it back to 1939. *Tin Man: Sci-fi reimagining of the book that turns into an epic adventure? Sure! Still feels the need to characterize Kansas in black-and-white, with the Gales' house number being 39 to boot. *Muppet Wizard of Oz: Let's be real, there was no saving MWoO. But it still made jokes that relied on having seen the 1939 film/known about its legacy. Just about the only iteration that is (as far as I can think) completely divorced from depending on the Garland movie is The Wiz, but that still gets compared to it all the time.

That lousy Muppets adaption seemed to borrow from every previously known version. The Flying Monkeys as a biker gang was from the Wiz. Supposedly it even has things from the original novels as well. But overall, just... worst Muppet movie ever. The characters barely shine though the lousy American Idol tie in it was meant to be when Fox was producing it. We lost a GREAT Hamlet parody with music by Robert Lopez for a cheap familiar tie in. And frankly, the original Muppet Movie WAS basically a reference to Wizard of Oz to begin with, and a far better one.

@@SpamEggSausage I watched that as a child. It was attached to a live-action kiddie show. The cartoons were produced by Videocraft, which became Rankin-Bass. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mNihodiansq6aaM.html

You have to admit, Turttleheart is quite the lover from the description we get.

Yeah.... that philosophy club scene still haunts me to this day. The book is great tho

Yeah, the Lion cub is dark enough, but the one with the Tiger and the whip and the... Ozma cosplayer... yeah, that scar remains after I've forgotten ninety percent of the plot.

I don't remember the book being gritty at all

@@h193013The series was pretty intense as a whole, but maybe not the first book as much. It gets cut out in some versions, but the tin man dismembers an entire pack of wolves. There's a lot of Baum's politics in the later books as well

CHRISTOPHER FUCKING FITZGERALD???

That's how it was meant to be. The book is Elphaba narrating her journey and the Musical is Glinda's perception hence the disparity. Superb really

I agree about the musical being better then the book. I read it years before I saw the musical and it was a tedious slog. After seeing the musical, I felt bad the next time I saw Glinda and the Wicked Witch interact in The Wizard of Oz, watching these two former best friends be on opposite sides.

jordan fisher as fiyero would be perfection

Can we also talk about how Fiyero turns into the scarecrow, and Boq into the tin woodman in the musical? It doesn't really dovetail with when and how Dorothy meets the scarecrow, the tin woodsman, and the cowardly lion in the original story, and also considering that the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz would never have left Dorothy's side. IIRC, none of that happens in the book... The Scarecrow and Tin Man in the book are completely different characters. I like that the creators of the musical wanted to create the link between the original Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's journey and this story, but the timing is all wrong for trying to merge those characters here.

I agree. None of the book characters are relatable

There has been poc actors as Fiyero. Look it up and don’t always assume the worst.

It's like if Willy Wonka ran a burlesque show.

NSFW READ AT OWN RISK . , . , . , . . Beastiality. I think one of the male characters ended up drugged and was raped a tiger. Said character later dies of an illness that sounds like AIDS. :/

@@CrystalDragen Oh my god, I remember now! I might have actually repressed it from my memory.

It happens sometimes.

It's not on my all-time greats list, but I like it well enough--it's got a catchy score that's fun to sing along to.

@@MusicalHell That’s fine, I also had some ideas for episodes you could make 1. The Use of Enchantment (it’s a book that Into the Woods is believed to be based on or you could look at the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales) 2. The String of Pearls (it’s a book that inspired Sweeney Todd) 3. Tevye the Dairyman (that’s what Fiddler is based on) 4. Madame Butterfly (it’s an opera Miss Saigon was based on) 5. Matilda 6. My Love My Love by Rosa Guy (as you know it inspired Once On This Island but you could also talk about The Little Mermaid) 7. The original Annie comic strips 8. The Von Trapp Family Singers

Blue hair?