Wicked behaviour

Given the critically-acclaimed global success of Stephen Schwartz's Wicked, you may already be familiar with its premise. For those readers who are not, the musical follows the story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, following her from birth and into school years.

The audience sees Elphaba (the Wicked Witch's ‘real’ name) endure years of bullying due to the fact that she was born with green skin, which marks her out as different from her peers. The show challenges the cultural positioning of the character – whom we all know as the villain of The Wizard of Oz – by positing that it was a reaction to a lifetime of bullying which resulted in her becoming the Wicked Witch as we know her today. Indeed, this central theme of the musical is presented as a question at the very start: ‘Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?’