Somewhere over the rainbow... things got skewed!

WICKED, Palace, Manchester, to November 16
WHOA! Since when do we leave the theatre rooting for the bad girl?

That’s just one of the several askew elements of a show that has been a massive success on Broadway and in London since the early 2000s — for reasons no one seems quite able to pinpoint.

Sure, it is based on the backstory of the “Wizard of Oz”, and how — against everything we know — the rival Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, and the Good Witch of the South, Glinda, became best friends in witch college (despite the former being green and smart and the latter a blonde airhead).

It’s sporadically funny, with the playful destruction of many words and the gleeful silliness of the self-admiring Glinda’s comments.

The music is designed to impress, with the two leads, played here by the stunningly effective Emily Tierney as Glinda and the even more so Nikki Davis-Jones as Elphaba, singing power ballad after power ballad, apparently intended to destroy their vocal cords.

And don’t get me started on the set, a brilliant mix of flashy lighting, steampunk-style mechanisms (including a great mechanical head for the Wizard) and brilliant lighting — quite a lot of which, as Blackadder’s pal Lord Percy once observed, is made “from the purest green...”

But there’s no getting away from the fact that for all its flash, bang and wallop, “Wicked” is a bit odd.

The show has clever references to L Frank Baum’s original, throws in relationship rivalry between the two girls for prince Fiyero (Liam Doyle), constructs a broad metaphor for President Bush’s overbearing state of its time — Elphaba isn’t evil but a sort of freedom-fighter opposed to the Wizard’s harsh treatment of animals, and admittedly the evening is never boring.

But the truth is I found it curiously uninvolving — apparently intended to impress, but not necessarily to thrill. Making Elphaba the product of a harsh and unloving upbringing, then a fighter for good causes while all around her are sucked in by the Oz hype, means we effectively root for one we have always thought to be the baddie.

The show’s success in Manchester is already assured; “Wicked” has sold well over 100,000 tickets — and the cost won’t be considered a waste by any viewer. Though they might not want to go back and see it again immediately...