Wicked – Apollo Victoria; 20 Years in the West End

4/5 Stars

Wicked has officially celebrated an incredible 20 years in London, and we were lucky enough to be at the Apollo Victoria Theatre for the 20th Anniversary Gala performance. However, in truth, the ‘Gala’ element was a bit misleading; unlike Les Misérables or Mamma Mia, there were no alumni performances or additional show-stopping moments. There were a couple of speeches from the lead actors (which went on a bit too long, in my opinion), a glass of fizz, some balloons, and the original cast standing at the back of the stage. It was all a bit underwhelming. 

Ok, back to the show: if you’ve listened to some of our earlier podcasts, you’ll know we’ve reviewed Wicked before, back before the films came along. This was our first visit to Oz in a few years – and interestingly, I noticed things this time that I’d completely missed before.

For anyone who somehow doesn’t know the story, Wicked takes the world of The Wizard of Oz and turns it on its head. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, it imagines what happened before Dorothy dropped into Oz and asks a very simple question: what if the Wicked Witch wasn’t actually wicked?

At its heart, it’s the story of Elphaba, the green-skinned young woman who will eventually become known as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, who will become Glinda the Good. They meet at university, initially can’t stand each other, and somehow develop this extraordinary friendship before their lives take them in very different directions.

For the 20th anniversary, Emma Kingston leads the company as Elphaba alongside Zizi Strallen as Glinda, with Jordan Litz as Fiyero. Claire Machin joins them as Madame Morrible, Michael Matus as The Wizard, Yara Fabricante as Nessarose, Ross Carpenter as Boq and David McKechnie as Doctor Dillamond.

And the performances as you would expect are fabulous. Kingston has the huge vocal power you need from an Elphaba, while Strallen is wonderfully funny as Glinda. The two of them really sell the relationship at the centre of the show, which for me has always been much more interesting than the romance. Wicked might have witches, wizards and flying monkeys, but underneath all of that spectacle, it’s really a story about friendship, identity, betrayal, prejudice and the people who change us.

I also noticed much more of the production itself this time. The huge dragon above the stage seemed far more active than I remembered, and there are lots of clever little details in the staging that completely passed me by on our previous visit.

And musically, there are moments in Wicked that still absolutely destroy me. There are two songs in particular where I am basically a blubbering wreck every single time: “Defying Gravity” and “For Good.” For me, Defying Gravity is ultimately about empowerment. It’s that moment of realising that the restraints and expectations other people place upon you don’t have to define who you are. You can set your own limits. You can choose who you want to be and, actually, who you know in your soul you are.

And then there’s For Good, this song is about the people who come into our lives at different stages. Some stay forever, some are there for a relatively short time, but the effect they have on us can be immeasurable. We’ve all had friendships like that. Someone enters your life and, whether they remain in it or not, you are fundamentally different because you knew them.

There is such power in the female friendship at the centre of Wicked, and I absolutely love that the relationship between these two women is ultimately the emotional heart of the whole thing.

BUT…Come on we all knew there was going to be a but!

My issue with Wicked remains pretty much the same as when we first reviewed it: the story gets messy. The concept is brilliant. Taking a character we all think we know as a villain and asking us to reconsider everything we’ve been told about her is genuinely clever. Where I struggle is when Wicked begins trying to weave itself directly into the events of The Wizard of Oz.

The final third, in particular, doesn’t completely work for me. Once we start getting explanations for characters such as the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, and Wicked begins intersecting directly with Dorothy’s story, I find myself questioning the timeline rather than being swept along.

Obviously this is fantasy. I’m not demanding documentary levels of historical accuracy from a musical containing flying monkeys. But because the show deliberately places itself alongside such a familiar story, I think those connections need to feel seamless – and for me, they don’t always. I almost wish it had either stayed more firmly within Elphaba and Glinda’s own story or found a slightly cleaner way of connecting the two worlds. I also wish they'd explored the storyline of the animals losing their voices further, which I think could have been a really interesting plot point but gets overlooked.

Furthermore, Wicked is 20 years old – and in places, I think it is beginning to look it. That might be sacrilege to some Wicked fans who argue the beauty is in the nostalgic sense of the production, but hear me out. When this production opened in London in 2006, it was enormous. The scale, the mechanics, the flying, the sets and the visual effects were spectacular.

They’re still impressive, but theatre technology and stagecraft have moved on enormously in 20 years. We’re now seeing productions doing extraordinary things with projections, video, automation, lighting and immersive scenic design. Against that backdrop, there are moments when Wicked no longer feels quite as visually magical as perhaps it once did.

Without question, the show is doing something very right – you don’t survive in the West End for 20 years otherwise – and it has now passed 7,000 London performances and been seen by more than 13 million people in London. But prehaps importantly, it’s not selling out anymore. This could be in part because the Apollo Victoria itself is also enormous (officially more than 2,300 seats – so even a very healthy audience for another West End theatre can leave empty seats in this one, and it regularly does), but could it also be because it just doesn’t hit the same anymore? 

Before the films arrived, we saw Wicked on a Saturday night with noticeably large areas of empty seats, and it made me contemplate its next chapter. I know there will be Wicked devotees screaming at me for saying this but, I wonder whether the London production might benefit from stopping at some point, taking a little break, and eventually returning with a fresh look at how the story is delivered on stage.

Not a completely different Wicked. I wouldn’t want to lose what makes the show special.

Just a little bit of theatrical Botox.

A spruce up. A bit of a zhuzh. A sprinkling of new magic dust.

Because Wicked is unquestionably a London theatre classic, twenty years in one theatre is an extraordinary achievement, but the question for me isn’t whether Wicked has stood the test of time. It absolutely has. The question is whether this exact production can stand another 20 years without evolving.

Despite my reservations about its future, twenty years after Wicked first arrived in London, there is still something pretty special about sitting underneath that giant dragon, hearing those opening notes and watching Elphaba take flight.

It just might need a little sprinkling of new magic dust around the edges… but whatever happens when “Defying Gravity” kicks in, I’ll still be crying like a baby.

ACCESSIBILITY

Accessibility at the Apollo Victoria Theatre is interesting because it is a beautiful old Art Deco theatre dating from 1930, and access has essentially been retrofitted into a building that was never designed with wheelchair users in mind.

The wheelchair-accessible seating is in Row F of the Dress Circle, where there are four wheelchair positions, located at either end of the row. You can also transfer into a theatre seat in Row F and have your wheelchair stored nearby.

We personally prefer transferring because I think you get a better view.

Getting there, however, is a bit of a journey.

Step-free access is through the Vauxhall Bridge Road entrance, and you need to use two platform lifts – one taking you from street level into the foyer and another taking you from the foyer up to the Circle. The theatre recommends arriving around 30–45 minutes before the performance if you need to use them.

And this is something you absolutely need to check before booking because the lifts have quite specific restrictions. The theatre currently states a maximum wheelchair size of 72cm wide by 93cm long, with a maximum combined weight of 150kg for the wheelchair and its user.

Personally, I have to take my footplates off my powerchair to fit safely onto the lift. My chair isn’t particularly enormous, but with the footplates attached it’s too long for the lift’s safety flaps.

So if you use a longer powerchair or scooter, or have fixed footplates that can’t easily be removed, please speak to the theatre before booking rather than assuming you’ll be able to use the lifts.

The accessible toilet is on the foyer level, which creates another slight complication because if you’re sitting in the Dress Circle you need to use the platform lift again to get back down to it.

And that became a genuine issue for us during the anniversary gala.

The theatre was extremely busy and there was quite a queue for the accessible toilet. By the time we’d got down on the lift, queued for the toilet and then gone through the whole process of getting back onto the lift and up to the Dress Circle, the second half had already started before we got back into our seats.

That’s worth knowing because a standard West End interval doesn’t leave you with masses of spare time when two lift journeys are involved.

What I will say is that the access hosts were wonderful. They were attentive, patient and did everything they could to make the process as easy as possible.

And the Apollo Victoria itself really is spectacular. It’s this huge, glorious Art Deco building that feels like part of the Wicked experience in its own right.

So if the lift dimensions work for your wheelchair and you’re prepared for access to involve a little more faffing around than at some theatres, I certainly wouldn’t let it put you off.