But first—here’s my belly at 35 weeks, defying gravity. The performance was awesome, just as it was when my sweet husband took me to the New York version for my birthday a few years ago, with two main differences: the Korean subtitles and our very close proximity to North Korea.
The stage where we watched the Wizard, Madame Morrible and Glinda manipulate the masses of Oz is just a few miles south of a country where propaganda, prison camps and a dictator rule. Where a person is worshiped as god. Where the extreme political storyline of Wicked is not at all far-fetched.
Was this awareness as poignant for the Koreans in the seats around us?
To me, the show became less an entertaining musical take on one of America’s bedrock cultural films and more a statement, or a warning. Wicked portrays a weak man drunk with power who will use and abuse others to keep it—and will make those others enemies of the state if they refuse to help. He creates a façade of frightening grandeur to comfort those under his power into thinking he can care for them, and to scare them away from questioning.
When I read the novel Wicked and saw the show on Broadway, of course these themes stood out as a cautionary tale of where human politics can stray. But this time, Joe and I couldn’t help but think: This is happening now, and not far from here.My other (slightly more shallow) question for the Korean viewers around me was this: Have you all seen The Wizard of Oz? Did Wicked make sense to you? There are definitely segments of the play and major plot points that would make no sense without mentally filling in those classic Judy Garland scenes.
The subtitles were an interesting addition—particularly because I kept looking over to see how they were translating the songs and whether or not I could understand any of the green letters on the screen (I could understand some!). They did use a lot of Konglish—which, as you may know from my previous post, I love translating. Often, a large swath of the audience laughed just a beat before the actors got to the punch line. I wonder how disorienting that was for the actors.
But the excitement certainly translated just fine, because people were lining up near any Wicked sign or paraphernalia to take photos before the show and during intermission. Before the show, we laughed about how we’d never seen that in the U.S. …But during intermission, we decided to follow suit and joined a short line to stand by Glinda.
Hey, if everyone else is doing it…
