Whether she is belting out a truly stunning version of “Defying Gravity’’ to close the first act or cracking your heart by confessing, brokenly, that “I’m Not That Girl,’’ Burns brings a richness of emotional coloration to the role of the green-skinned outcast who discovers that she has supernatural powers.
The rest of the cast does not match Burns’s level of radiant intensity, and there are some dead spots between the musical numbers.
Chandra Lee Schwartz plays the other key role, Galinda (later Glinda) as a kind of cross between Reese Witherspoon’s Elle in “Legally Blonde’’ and Teri Garr’s Inga in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein.’’
It is a capable performance, but lacks the nimble wit, spot-on timing, and depth of feeling that Kristin Chenoweth made central to our understanding of the role.
For instance, while Schwartz capers amusingly about the stage during her rendition of “Popular,’’ a larky tune in which Galinda tries to teach Elphaba how to play the coquette, she does not convince us of Galinda’s later anguish when she realizes that her boyfriend, Fiyero (Richard H. Blake), does not love her after all.
As every “Wicked’’ aficionado knows, it is Elphaba who has won Fiyero, and therein lies the secret to the show’s popularity. Girls and young women have responded with particular fervor to this musical because it captures the heartbeat of adolescence.
After all, “Wicked’’ is a fable about a misunderstood misfit with untapped talents who emerges triumphant in the end, a story about cliques, complicated friendships, romantic yearning, the ever-shifting terrain of social status, and that eternal teenage challenge: finding your true self.
That is plenty to chew on and sing about, and “Wicked’’ is least convincing when it tries to be something more than that. As political commentary on the Bush years, it is ham-fisted; as pseudo-philosophical inquiry into who and what are really wicked, it does not go anywhere especially new or thought-provoking.
