Hi, everyone. And welcome back to one of your favorite segments 【The sound of musicals】欢迎回来【曲外之音】. Hi, Oliver.

Hello.

So today we’re gonna continue to talk about Wicked.

Yes. We're gonna keep going. And you did the impossible, in the last episode by summarizing a brief summary of the story. There's a lot to it.

Of a very long story.

It is. It is. I think it's only fair that I take the lead in this part as we move on to talk about the themes because there are a lot of themes and quite powerful themes, really all the way through this musical Wicked.

Yeah. It's one of those things, isn't it? Like on the surface. It's still quite lighthearted. It's probably based on a children's book.

But there are many big themes, heavy themes.

There are, yeah, definitely, there's a quite a few things to talk about. I mean, the most obvious one straight away is good versus evil. This idea of is someone completely good and somebody else completely evil in any situation. It's one of the most obvious ones I feel.

Yeah. Hence the name Wicked, wicked means evil, right?

Yeah. It does. It means evil, not very nice, maybe not completely evil, but certainly they do bad things. Yeah.

So Oliver, do you think Wicked - it does - because obviously Elphaba is called or tagged as the Wicked Witch of the West?

What do you think of Elphaba the character?

I don't think she is wicked at all. I think that the way that the musical shows her is she did do a lot of things with good intentions. That's the thing. To be evil and wicked, you have to have bad intentions. And I don't feel that Elphaba did. I feel that she was trying to make the best of a situation in a way. And, it didn't go her way, which is a little bit tragic really, it's quite sad that these things as they unfolded turned against her.

There was a lot of discussion about whether good intentions but still bad ending. Does that make you wicked? Does that make you good?

Well, yeah. It's a very philosophical question. I know there's a phrase, a very common English phrase, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

So, again, it's talking about how this terrible evil place, it's made from people trying to do good things. So I'm not sure there really is. And I mean people have been trying to find an answer for years and years to that question. So it really is a very philosophical and it's almost a personal thing. It's what you decide. It’s your judgment on that.

Yeah. But what about Glinda? Glinda, this always makes me giggle, like her name is actually Glinda the Good.

Glinda the good. Yeah, just like the Wicked Witch of the West is all evil. Of course. Glinda is supposed to be everything good, nothing bad at all. And yet when she's hurt and heartbroken about Elphaba and the boy she loves running away together, she still does help the Wizard of Oz with quite an evil plan to kill Elphaba’s sister.

So I'm not entirely sure how the good works there in her name.

Yeah, you know that in the actual show, in the actual story, everyone thinking Glinda is this little Miss Perfect? She's also very focused on keeping up appearances and doing what superficially seems to correct things. But later on, when she was like but I'm not bad, I'm good, I didn't do these things, I didn't ask to do these things, I didn't know all these things are evil. The wizard’s accomplice – the Wizard of Oz’s accomplice. One of their teachers said something basically saying I see right through you. Don't think you can fool me you know perfectly well what you did. So just keep up the appearances, smile and shut up.

It does feel like Glinda is as you say very superficial character focused a lot on appearances without thinking about much else. And, sometimes certainly.

What are some other themes apart from goodness and wickedness?

Well. Another theme which jumped right out at me is the idea of power. People who use power to get what they want, and the idea of kind of a mob mentality or a mob attitude that very quickly spreads as we saw the Wizard of Oz turns the people against Elphaba calling her the wicked witch, and it very quickly takes off that the people they really want Elphaba to die when they have absolutely no idea what she's done.

I know, this is the scary part about mob mentality, although they show it in songs and dances.

But if you think about how the people of Oz reacted, and how they turned so quickly, just because someone told them or brainwash them that this person is bad, I don't need to explain why, but she's bad and kill her. That's scary.

Yeah. It is quite scary and kind of comparing it to the modern world we have today.

It's so easy to go on to any number of social media and just say what you want to say. And the number of people who will watch that or their friends will send it to them and things like this can spread very quickly. And that scares me personally certainly.

Yeah. And I think there's this idea of dehumanization就有点去人性化. Basically, if you treat, because as humans, we all have empathy, right? So we are not inclined to hurt each other. So in order to hurt someone, in order to even kill someone, you need to first dehumanize them, make them the Wicked Witch of the West. They're not human. They don't have human emotions, they're just bad, they're just wicked.

That's it, yeah. And in a lot of the older stories and such we are shown on screen - this is the bad person! We instantly accept that because we are told to do so, and clearly they are evil. For whatever reason, we just accept it and we hate this character, we don't want them to win. Even though why? Why don't we want them to win, dehumanizing, it's very serious. It happens a lot sadly, and it's never a good thing. Yeah.

And to go back to what you were talking about, saying that online, let's say cyberbullying that can dehumanize someone, and then that makes it okay to attack this person, because this victim is no longer human. We can say whatever nasty things to this person to bully him or her.

Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it only takes one person or one message or one comment to start the flood. Really, if anyone kind of breaks that dam, then they dehumanize someone and mob mentality kicks in. And they have someone to target and to rally against which - a horrible thing to happen.

Yeah. But before we get into even darker territory, let's talk about music, which is what it's supposed to be mainly about, right? Musicals are supposed still to be about music, not teaching you deep, meaningful moral lessons.

Well. Why can't they do both? I feel musicals do quite well in both areas.

Oh, I forgot. You love those very, very deep, dark, heavy musicals.

I do, they are my kind of thing. Yeah. So one of the songs that I quite like and I think it's quite funny. It's called, What Is This Feeling? Yeah. Do you know it?

Oh. It's between when the two girls, when the two witches, Glinda and Elphaba when they were roommates. Right?

Yeah. That's it, exactly. When they first meet each other and they become roommates and it kind of starts off as …

A love song.

Almost like a love song, exactly like they really like each other. Oh wow, this is fantastic. And then it just does a 180 and flips completely with one of my favorite lines. What was it? Unadulterated loathing - is how they describe it just straight away. It's very good.

这段音乐特别好玩, 就是这两个女巫, 一个好女巫和坏女巫, 就Elphaba和Glinda.

他们两个在做室友的时候, 这种典型的像高中生或者说两个少女, 她们两个就不和, 但是这个歌一开始听起来就像一首情歌一样说one of them says what is this feeling?

So sudden and new I felt it at the moment I laid eyes on you, my pulse is rushing, my head is reeling, my face is flushing. So you're waiting for like a love story to happen. And then they're saying, what is this feeling fervid as a flame? Does it have a name? Yes. Loathing - Unadulterated loathing.

Hatred.

We hate each other. Hatred.

As a loathing for your face, for your voice, for your clothing. I loathe it all.

It's very good. It takes you on a bit of a ride that one. Yeah.

All right.

So let's listen to this bit of teen drama.

Okay. That's also one of my favorite songs, but there's another one sung by Glinda, which is popular. Do you remember when she's trying to give the Wicked Witch Elphaba a makeover to make her popular?

Oh. Yes.

I remember this is when they've become a little bit more friendly towards each other, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And she's trying to help. Glinda feels like she has to help Elphaba to be normal in a way really, it's kind of pushing. You know. Yeah.

Exactly.

For example, she says don't worry, I'm determined to succeed, follow my lead and yes indeed you will be popular. Although Elphaba says you really don't have to do that.

But Glinda says you're gonna be popular and she just says it again and again, popular you're gonna be popular. I'll teach you to proper poise when you talk to boys little ways to flirt and flounce, I'll show you what shoes to wear, how to fix your hair, everything that really counts to be popular, I will help you be popular.

Yeah, we can definitely see the superficial side of Glinda there coming through, how much focus she puts on looks and appearance and clothing and being popular.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think if you dig a bit deeper Elphaba is having a struggle between her own identity and this whole conformity to the accepted ideas of beauty, obviously, if she just follows everything Glinda says and become someone else, she's gonna be better liked by people, more accepted.

Yeah. It does bring up the question of personal identity versus popularity. If she follows Glinda, people will like her, but she won't be herself anymore. She will be somebody else. It will always be this type of a show, really, kind of hiding who she really is behind this wall of clothes and shoes and hair and everything else.

So let's listen to this bit of popular.

Okay. And then any more songs you want to mention?

Just one more that got my attention was - it's a little bit later on in the show. And it's called Good Deed.

Oh, yes.

It's going, we're gonna take it a little bit darker again, I'm afraid. Because the message the theme I think is quite good in this song, and it's all about the idea of no good deed goes unpunished. It's about doing good things and getting punished for doing it.

So going back to the…

No good deed goes unpunished. It is actually a saying in English, isn't it?

It is. Yeah. It's a - you can say it a few ways there's like no good deed goes unrewarded is what it could be. Some people say no bad deed goes unpunished, but certainly in this musical and in other stories and novels, writers they often use no good deed goes unpunished, yeah.

这个话的意思no good deed goes unpunished, 就是像我们说的好人没好报,或者好心没好报, so you do good things.

But instead of being rewarded, you actually get punished. You actually get really tragic ending. In other words, basically those who help others are doomed to suffer as a result of their helpfulness, which points again at the main theme, goodness and wickedness - who is good, who is wicked?

Yeah, it goes back to the idea of good intentions. And even if things are bad at the end, does having good intentions to begin with count enough really? Should you be punished for trying even if it goes wrong? Interesting thing to think about really.

But in there's also a little bit that I would like to get your take on. So when Elphaba was doing some soul searching, she was also asking herself this question. She said one question haunts and hurts, too much too much to mention, was I really seeking good or just seeking attention?

Yeah. That's kind of a little bit of a parallel between the Popular song, isn't it? I feel. It's kind of is it attention as in popularity or seeking good as her identity torn between this idea of getting attention and maybe doing the right thing, because of the attention or did she actually want to do something good.

Yeah, I think this is an ongoing debate not just within this musical, but just in real life. That's why they say is there truly and completely altruistic deed, because when you do good things and people give you compliments and give you a lot of respect, is that not feeding into your ego? You know.

Yeah. That's it. Exactly. I mean psychologically, if you do something good, your brain releases chemicals which reward you. That's something you have no control over. So is that actually altruistic? Because even biologically you get a reward.

Exactly.

But it's a question which people have been asking for hundreds if not thousands of years. So I'm not sure we'll get an answer anytime soon. No.

Yeah. A lot of these are philosophical, big philosophical.

They are very philosophical.

But nonetheless, let’s listen to the bit that I was talking about.

Okay. I guess we talk about all these, we don't really need to have an answer, but it would certainly make the story more interesting to show more interesting if you know a little bit of the main themes and conflicts, right?

Definitely, I think the point of these themes and conflicts in musicals and everything else is to make you think. I feel if we had a clear answer like the original Wizard of OZ, this is good, this is evil. I feel like nowadays that isn't the way to go. People nowadays I feel enjoy their own opinions and creating their own ideas on these themes.

Yeah, and to sum it all up.

Do you know that although Wicked might not be your favorite or my favorite, but it actually has already surpassed Cats this year in April with its 7,486 performance…

Hoo~ Wow!

And became Broadway's 4th longest-running show.

Wow. I knew it was popular, but those are some pretty big numbers right there.

Yeah, so maybe next time if you're in New York or in London, check it out, it's still on. Like Wicked is still on both West End and Broadway.

Definitely worth it.

All right. And on that note, we're gonna wrap up here. If you have ever seen, watched or read about Wicked the story or the musical, leave us a comment in the comment section, or you can put in your request, tell us the musical that you want us to talk about. Thank you very much for coming back to the studio, Oliver.

Thank you again for having me. It's great to be back. It's been too long, it's too long.

Yeah. I know, I know, and hopefully we'll do another one real soon.

I hope so.

We'll see you next time.

Goodbye.