Wicked: For Good: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo bring great tenderness to this beautifully staged Oz musical

The problem with Wicked the musical is that it continues after the interval. It is, after all, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz  – the first act ends as Elphaba completes her transformation into the Wicked Witch of the West, albeit rather nicer than in her familiar Margaret Hamilton form. Surely, we the audience should allow L. Frank Baum’s novel, and by turn Victor Fleming’s 1939 film, to complete the yarn. Instead, on stage, Dorothy et alia pop in and out of the wings as other unseen events unfold, often adding more plotholes than it fills. Not to mention the dearth of tunes worthy of whistling on the road home. 

As with the first Wicked film, Jon M. Chu has taken Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz’s stage production material and fully orchestrated it. Cinema affords him the opportunity to create a more epic vision of Oz, opening with the yellow brick road’s construction. Chu’s film twists that magical image into the sinister creation of slave labour. If Wicked part one showed the breakdown of difference in the blossoming friendship of green outcast Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and pink princess Glinda (Ariana Grande), to offer an optimistic view of society, part two melts it with a sobering pail of water. 

Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard and Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible lead a reign of terror more horrifying even than Yeoh’s autotuned attempt at vocals, with Glinda propped up as a vision of propaganda and enlightenment. Elphaba’s sister Nessarose, played by Marissa Bode, instigates policies that discriminate against Munchkins in a selfish attempt to keep hold of Boq (Ethan Slater), adding to the text a more explicit comment on fascistic immigration policy. Where in the musical Nessa is patronisingly given the ability to walk out of her wheelchair, Wicked: For Good transforms this into a moving, affirming sequence of magic and body horror. 

The first act was a film about Elphaba, giving Erivo her time in the sun, but the second belongs to Glinda and her path to goodness. Her backstory is explored further, and Grande sparkles in a new number, ‘The Girl in the Bubble’. Where the first film was operatic in its musical scale, filling the screen with a chorus of extras, this is more of a chamber piece. The Technicolor wonder of The Wizard of Oz is, after all, taking place outside while Chu takes us into Glinda’s private bubblegum quarters in the Emerald City and Elphaba’s woodland hideaway. The greatest loss to this film is Jonathan Bailey’s go-for-broke charm as Fiyero, who is now, quite literally, rendered a stiff object. 

But Wicked: For Good shines in its closing moments. For its sole great musical number ‘For Good’, Chu strips back the Ozian sheen to focus on the love between the two witches. It is deftly staged, and tenderly acted by Grande and Erivo. The first part ended with gravity-defying grandeur, the second sticks a gentle and beautiful landing.

► Wicked: For Good is in UK cinemas now.