The New Yorker Radio Hour
From Critics at Large: After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
Tue, 17 Dec 2024
The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few and far between. Meanwhile, one of the biggest films of the season is Jon M. Chu’s earnest (and lengthy) adaptation of “Wicked,” the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West that first premièred on the Great White Way nearly twenty years ago—and has been a smash hit ever since. On this episode, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss why “Wicked” is resonating with audiences in 2024. They consider it alongside other recent movie musicals, such as “Emilia Pérez,” which centers on the transgender leader of a Mexican cartel, and Todd Phillips’s follow-up to “Joker,” the confounding “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Then they step back to trace the evolution of the musical, from the first shows to marry song and story in the nineteen-twenties to the seventies-era innovations of figures like Stephen Sondheim. Amid the massive commercial, technological, and aesthetic shifts of the last century, how has the form changed, and why has it endured? “People who don’t like musicals will often criticize their artificiality,” Schwartz says. “Some things in life are so heightened . . . yet they’re part of the real. Why not put them to music and have singing be part of it?”This episode originally aired on Critics at Large, December 12, 2024.
What is the significance of 'Wicked' in today's musical landscape?
Usually.
Usually, not always.
Yeah.
puts it into song. I mean, many different kinds of music do the same thing. But I think that with the musical, it's often people who don't like musicals will often criticize its artificiality. And I like a musical that puts the artificiality front and center.
And what you're getting at, I think, with the lighting choices, with the kind of over-the-topness of this, is some things in life are artificial. so heightened, are so unrealistic, are so, and yet they're part of the real, that why not put them to music and have singing be part of it?
Nomi, you have volunteered as tribute, in a way, to see a film that I think the three of us were slightly reluctant to see, which is Joker Folie a Deux.
Joker Folie a Deux, starring Stephanie Germanotta, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix.
This movie was the follow-up to Joker, the Todd Phillips absolute blockbuster film, and this film did not succeed, and it's a musical. Please report back from your journey to Joker.
It's inexplicably a musical. In fact, it was not marketed as a musical. I feel like the studio probably – I mean, this is all guesswork. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but probably sort of knew that it had a stinker on their hands and were sort of trying to hide it, you know, to sort of like push it as like a more –
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