‘Wicked’ flying into Smith Center for six-week run

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It’s not easy being green.

Just ask Elphaba, the complex, emerald-complected protagonist of “Wicked,” which checks into The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall next week for a six-week run.

Or, better yet, ask Stephen Schwartz, the Tony-winning (and Oscar-winning) composer-lyricist of the megamusical about the early years of those eventual “Wizard of Oz” enemies, the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.

Inspired by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” the musical has been breaking records on Broadway for almost nine years. Two national tours are currently crisscrossing the country; internationally, the show has played everywhere from London to Tokyo, Singapore to Sydney.

There’s also a movie in the works – whenever “Wicked” starts slowing down onstage.

Schwartz has been here before, decades ago, riding the rocket from Broadway hit to international phenomenon with his 1971 debut “Godspell.” (He was 23 then.)

“One can never expect that,” the composer, now 64, acknowledges during a telephone interview. “That has to do with the timing and the zeitgeist – the time and place in which it appears.”

Even so, “Wicked’s” creators – including book writer Winnie Holtzman – sensed, “fairly early on,” that “if we did our job well enough, it would work.”

Then again, Schwartz thought “Wicked” would work as soon as he heard the book’s premise: the familiar Oz tale, as seen from the perspective of the original’s cackling villain, who’s such a cipher she didn’t have a name before Maguire conjured Elphaba’s name, inspired by the initials of original “Oz” author L. Frank Baum.

Schwartz “sort of had an epiphany when I just heard the idea,” during a Hawaii snorkeling excursion with friends – including singer Holly Near, who mentioned “this interesting book she was reading.”

As Near outlined the basics of the tale, “I thought it was the greatest idea – I responded to it immediately,” Schwartz says.

But there’s a world of difference between being hit by a lightning bolt of an idea – and capturing that lightning in a bottle.

Schwartz and his colleagues knew they were on the right yellow brick road when people were responding to the show in the early stages, even though “we knew we had a lot more work to do,” he notes.

In part, Schwartz attributes the response to “the central relationship” between Elphaba (played in Las Vegas by Nicole Parker) and Glinda (Patti Murin ), which “seemed to be striking a chord” with people.

Elphaba in particular has emerged as a character audiences identify with, Schwartz points out, because she “feels like such an outsider and has such a longing to fit in – and then she starts to learn what the personal costs to her will be.”

She discovers all that (as so many do) in college.

The misunderstood misfit goes to Oz’s Shiz University to care for her beautiful, wheelchair-bound (and decidedly not green) sister Nessarose (Demaree Hill).

But Elphaba winds up with a roommate who’s her total opposite: flighty golden girl Galinda (soon to become Glinda), who’s as “Popular” – to cite her signature song – as Elphaba is shunned and misunderstood.

Although Elphaba and Glinda are enemies at first, the two come to value one another and change one another, Schwartz observes.

“The complexity of that relationship speaks to people and their relationships,” he says.

And then there’s the dashing prince Fiyero (Cliffton Hall), who’s used to “Dancing Through Life” and finds himself dancing alongside both Glinda and Elphaba – for very different reasons.

“We have Elphabas and Glindas and Fiyeros” in our own world, “characters who come from a different place,” Schwartz observes. ” All of them have a journey – and all of them have things inside that they hide. That’s pretty universal.”

So is Elphaba’s yearning to find, and pursue, her quest, he adds, quoting producer David Stone, “who always says, ‘We all have that green girl inside of us.’ “

Or, as Elphaba sings in her declaration-of-independence anthem “Defying Gravity,” when she dares to flout expectations and follow her own star, “Everyone deserves the chance to fly – and if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free.”

Elphaba’s journey may be “both empowering and triumphant,” Schwartz says, but anyone who’s ever seen the 1939 movie classic “The Wizard of Oz” knows it’s “not unrealistic and happy ending-y” either.

The creators of “Wicked” learned early on, during preliminary readings, that people who were coming to the show were bringing the movie with them, Schwartz acknowledges.

Those early audiences didn’t really care about the original book Maguire wrote – or, for that matter, Baum’s original “Oz” tales, Schwartz says.

“But we couldn’t do anything that contradicted the movie,” he says. “We had to treat the movie as if it were a documentary.”

That realization reminded the show’s creators of “the pervasiveness of that movie in American culture,” he says.

There wasn’t a single day that went by, he says, where he didn’t see a reference to some line from the movie, whether in a newspaper or magazine article or on television. (Think “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” or “Somewhere over the rainbow” or … well, you get the idea.)

“Everyone knows every line (of the movie) by heart,” Schwartz says, calling that “both an initial challenge but ultimately one of the strengths” of “Wicked.” (Or, as some audiences comment after seeing the show, ‘So that’s what those flying monkeys are all about.’ ”)

Yet even in non-English-speaking countries where “The Wizard of Oz” isn’t a cultural touchstone, “Wicked’s” central relationship needs no translation, the composer suggests.

That relationship, which powers the entire show, also counters the all-too-human tendency to “view everything in black and white,” Schwartz muses, when “we demonize some people and make heroes out of others.”

As “Wicked” suggests, things aren’t quite so easily categorized – not even for the show’s creators.

Although some songs (“Defying Gravity” and “Popular” among them) came quickly, others (“The Wizard and I,” “Dancing Through Life”) took more work, Schwartz admits.

“There’s a lot to set up,” he points out. “Some of that was challenging, but that’s the job. Part of doing a musical” is solving “the puzzle of it all. Where do songs come from? How do they propel the action?”

And even when he and his fellow creators were “crabbing at one another,” struggling to solve problems, “I liked spending time in that world,” Schwartz says. “I liked putting myself inside those characters. That was always a lot of fun.”

As “Wicked’s” roaring, soaring success has proven, audiences around the world share his enchantment with the show’s alternate take on Oz.

“I’m thrilled,” Schwartz admits, “to have a piece that seems to speak to people so much.”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.