His music has changed the world but who is the man behind Wicked?

Stephen Schwartz wishes his musical Wicked was less relevant now than when it premiered two decades ago.

“It’s a shame that from a political point of view, what Wicked is talking about seems much more current,” he says, adding that it did open after the Iraq War, so was timely then. “It just was not as severe nor as commonplace as it seems right now.”

The show tells the backstory of The Wizard of Oz, exploring the childhood friendship between the women who would grow up to become the good witch of the east and the wicked witch of the west.

That’s what attracted Schwartz to the idea in the first place. It’s the Oz story, which he describes as “one of [Western culture’s] central myths”, from the witches’ point of view. “That’s all I knew when I decided it was a project for me,” he says. “It was going to examine the issues of what is good and what is evil? And are things as black and white as they seem?”

Based on the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, Wicked is essentially a love story, according to Schwartz. “It’s essentially a love story though not a romantic or sexual love story, but a deep love story between these two very different women who come into each other’s lives, and each are changed forever because of that.”

It also explores the idea of “othering”, another strategy adopted by many current politicians: Elphaba is famously green.

“There’s a lot of that going on in America right now. One of the nice things about the fact that our character was green was that she could be a metaphor … we were able to talk about exactly the issue that you bring up, with it clearly being metaphorical without a specific to our world,” Schwartz says.

“As the wizard says in the show, ‘The best way to bring people together is to give them a common enemy.’ ”

Winner of three Oscars, three Grammys, and with six Tony award nominations, Schwartz is one of only two composer/lyricists to have three shows run longer than 1500 performances on Broadway; Jerry Herman of Hello, Dolly, Mame and La Cage aux Folles is the other.

The 75-year-old also wrote Pippin (1972) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), The Prince of Egypt (1998) – based upon the Book of Exodus – and Godspell (1971). The songs and music for Wicked were co-written with Winnie Holzman.

Musical theatre is like nothing else, according to Schwartz. “The combination of the storytelling, and the music, and the live audience, and the exchange between the audience and what’s on stage, you just don’t get that anywhere else,” he says.

“When musical theatre is working and people are really connecting with the characters, and then the music adds that strong emotional element, it’s really thrilling. I don’t think any other art form or genre delivers that same impact when it’s well done.”

After its six-month run in Sydney, Wicked heads south with an Australian cast including Courtney Monsma as good witch Glinda and Sheridan Adams wicked witch as Elphaba, together with theatre royalty Robyn Nevin as Madame Morrible and Simon Burke as the Wizard.

In the much-anticipated film version, Jeff Goldblum plays the charlatan Wizard, Michelle Yeoh is Madame Morrible, with English actor Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and singer Ariana Grande as Glinda. Schwartz has been closely involved in the movie, scoring, as well as orchestral recording and mixing. It will be a two-parter, with the first instalment landing late this year.

He is also excited to be writing a new musical, Queen of Versailles, which will star Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda from Wicked’s Broadway run.

It’s a kooky story based on the 2012 documentary of the same name, about billionaire socialite Jacqueline Siegel, following her and her husband David – also known as the Timeshare King – their eight children and their dogs, as they try to build a $100 million house in Orlando, Florida. Inspired by the Palace of Versailles, it would have been the largest private home in America had it been built; the 2008 recession derailed their plans.

Asked what hooked him on musical theatre, Schwartz says it was a show few people know, called Shinbone Alley. The music was written by George Kleinsinger, a composer and family friend who lived nearby in New York.

“From time to time my parents and I would go over to his house and he would play whatever song he was working on. And though I don’t remember this, apparently then I would go over to the piano and kind of pick out the tune,” he says. “When I did this a couple of times, George said to my parents that he felt I had an ear. [I was] already a kid who was very interested in music and who wanted to hear records all the time and was singing all the time. George suggested to my parents that they get me a piano and get me piano lessons.

“I had that sort of epiphany that I think most people who wind up going into musical theatre have, which is the first time they see it, they have this realisation that that’s the world they want to inhabit for their lives if they can. That happened to me around the age of nine.”

Outside of work, Schwartz is a big traveller and has just returned from Chile, Patagonia and Easter Island. He also likes to watch and play tennis. “But these days, mostly, I’m just working. Just trying to meet the deadline that’s right in front of me.”

In recent years, Hamilton and The Book of Mormon have helped musical theatre evolve: Schwartz is a big fan of both. “I happen to be friendly with Lin Manuel Miranda, and therefore I had seen earlier versions of Hamilton. I was the first person to tell him he was going to win the Pulitzer Prize, three years before it opened on Broadway,” he says with a laugh.

“Lin is a genius, which is not a word I use lightly. He has such a deep knowledge of the form itself, and the history of the form, and he is able to use the classic techniques. And then his very special voice, he’s very good at storytelling and character development.

“Musical theatre is so much about structure, I think then the style and the form and everything can be really inventive. But in the end, you want to have characters you’re rooting for, and a story you can become engaged in.”

The majority of commercial theatre is essentially recycling what has already proven successful, he says, but every year one or two things really try something different. Last year, Oratorio For Living Things by Heather Christian blew him away. Staged off Broadway, it’s an immersive show using choral work, featuring 18 virtuosic singers and instrumentalists.

Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was another. “That was very impressive to me. There were a lot of things about that show that I found inspiring and adventurous,” Schwartz says.

“For me as a practitioner of musical theatre, it’s when I see things where somebody has pushed the form a bit, the kind of content you can deal with, where you sit up and take notice and think, ‘Oh, you can do that?’ I try to remember that when I’m approaching my own work.”

Wicked is at the Regent Theatre from March 7.

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