Allison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. Thank you so much for sharing part of your day with us. This year, Wicked is celebrating 20 years on Broadway, the musical that reminds us that perspective is important by telling the origin stories of the characters in The Wizard of Oz. Most importantly, the longtime relationship between Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West. Even if you haven't seen the show, you've likely heard Stephen Schwartz's enduring score featuring numbers like Defying Gravity, Popular, and For Good.

You know what I was one of those people I'd never seen Wicked until this past weekend. I read the book and I knew the songs, but I somehow never saw the musical. The themes of being true to oneself othering in propaganda for a first-timer, man, it feels vital at this moment. Besides it's big and splashy and fun. Today we celebrate 20 Years of Wicked with composer Stephen Schwartz. Stephen, so nice to meet you, and current stars, Alyssa Fox, who plays Elphaba, having played the role in the National Touring Company. Hi, Alyssa.

Alyssa Fox: Hello. It's so nice to be here with you today.

Allison Stewart: And McKenzie Kurtz, whose bio reads, "Playing Glinda has been her dream since seeing Wicked for the first time when she was nine." Hi, McKenzie.

McKenzie Kurtz: Hi. Thank you so much.

Allison Stewart: Listeners, we want to bring you into the conversation. What are your memories of seeing Wicked over the years? What has the soundtrack meant to you? Maybe you've even performed the show at some point in your life, whether on Broadway or in a regional production. We want to hear from you. We want Wicked Stories on this 20th anniversary. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can join us on air. You can also text to us at that number. Stephen, the show is actually based on that novel by Gregory McGuire. How did you want the music to contribute to the world-building part of the story? To really sound like it's coming from a fantastical place?

Stephen Schwartz: I didn't want the music to sound like any place that you could relate to in our world, where you'd be like, "Oh, that sounds like I'm in '80s pop or whatever." That was challenging. I developed a different scale, which I tried working with, and that was really a dead end. Ultimately it was a matter of just trying to use unusual harmonies and chord progressions, et cetera. I have a quick question for you because of your intro where you just said that you knew the book but you hadn't seen the show until last week. What surprised you? Because it's quite different from the book. Were there things that you didn't expect?

Allison Stewart: I really liked in the show that it's really a love story between these two women.

Stephen Schwartz: Which is not the book at all.

Allison Stewart: No. That's the love story of it. I thought it was really a lovely surprise.

Stephen Schwartz: Great. Thank you.

Allison Stewart: Alyssa, when did you first encounter Wicked?

Alyssa Fox: When Wicked came out in 2003, I was a sophomore or junior in high school. I remember listening to the cast album for the first time, and it really changed me fundamentally. I always knew that I wanted to be a singer, but when I heard Stephen's score, I was like, "This is what I'm meant to be doing with my life." It really touched me in a very deep way, and it's just such an honor to get to play this role every night.

Allison Stewart: McKenzie, how about for you? I read that blurb from the playbill that made me laugh and smile.

[laughter]

McKenzie Kurtz: The first time I saw Wicked at the Gerstman Theater, I was nine years old. My parents had actually bought us all separate tickets so we could be as close to the stage as possible. It was honestly just such a moving experience for me. I had been listening to the original cast recording before going to see it, but then just seeing it live and in front of me was so impactful and it really affirmed for me that this is what I wanted to do with my life and I wanted to be in this show.

Allison Stewart: Alyssa, please correct me if I'm wrong, but you were the standby for Elphaba on Broadway for a long time.

Alyssa Fox: Yes. Most of my time with Wicked has been as the standby.

Allison Stewart: How did it feel to step into the leading role?

Alyssa Fox: It was such a dream because I had worked towards that for about 13 years. I started as an understudy in Wicked in San Francisco in 2010. I had tried to climb the ranks and I really pushed for getting lead because I really knew that I wanted it. It's so incredible that it came. I had to wait so long for something I wanted, but then once it came, it came at the right time with the right people in the right year. It feels just like everything is a culmination of all the years of work. It's been just an honor and so exciting to be a part of it, especially this year.

Allison Stewart: My guests are Stephen Schwartz, the composer, Alyssa Fox, and McKenzie Kurtz. Both are starring in Wicked right now. Wicked celebrating its 20th anniversary. Stephen, Kristin Chenoweth recently tweeted a letter she received from the late Steven Sondheim who wrote her this note after she turned down a role in his show for this show. It says, "Thank you for the thoughtful and generous note. I too was disappointed but I understand completely. I hope that Wicked turns out to be everything you wanted to be and that Steve wants it to be too." I'm assuming that Steve is you.

Stephen Schwartz: That is me, yes. Steve Sondheim and I were friends actually particularly at that time. We would play bridge together and have dinner together, et cetera. He never said anything quite as openly generous to me about the show. I thought it was lovely to read it all this time later in the letter to Kristin.

Allison Stewart: How did you know you'd arrived on the right combination of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth as the original leads?

Stephen Schwartz: Kristin was with us for quite a while. I invited Kristin to do the first full reading of the show out in Los Angeles about three and a half years before we actually went into production. It was very early in the process and we didn't really know what we were doing, but I knew Kristin was of course, extremely talented and would bring a lot to the comedy of the show. Then the minute we saw her in the role, it was so clearly a perfect fit that we just begged her to be with us from that point on. Idina came into it maybe a year or so later, and we actually did auditions.

I do remember that Idina was in Aida at the time, and she came in to sing a song from Aida, but she was wearing a black dress with green eyeshadow. Of course, Idina is one of the great singers in the western world so that became pretty clear. We really didn't know that the chemistry between the two women would be so strong until we saw it. That was just luck.

Allison Stewart: McKenzie, what is your process for preparing to be Glinda? How did you learn to become part of a show that had been up for so long?

McKenzie Kurtz: Well, I joke about this, but I've been performing Popular in my room since I was about eight years old. Stepping into this role, I definitely brought a lot of my ideas that I have had since quite literally childhood. It's just been such a blessing to be able to bring my childhood self to work with me every day. It's the coolest thing ever. This role is so much fun. Glinda is the girly girl with the glitz and the glamor, but at the core of it, it cares so much about Elphaba and just wants to help Elphaba. I'm lucky enough that my Elphaba, Alyssa Fox, and I are super close in real life.

That's the easiest job in the world to just love her and support her throughout this entire journey that we go on every night. Prep-wise, realistically getting to the theater an hour before the show and warming up, and taking the time to chill out before we do the thing.

Allison Stewart: I'm just going to throw the question out there that everyone wants to know. The green makeup, Alyssa. How long does it take to put on? How long does it take to take off?

Alyssa Fox: I have an incredible makeup artist, Krista, and they've gotten it down to a science, especially after 20 years of doing it 8 times a week. I come in and sit in the chair and the first 10 minutes are for wig prep. Then it only takes about 20, 25 minutes to get all of the green makeup on before I go on stage. There's a lot of it, and it hangs out. It's always around. You can see, there's some in my hair here.

Allison Stewart: There's a little in your hair.

Alyssa Fox: That was from days ago. It sticks around. It takes a lot more effort to get off. I take a shower every night after the show. There's a lot of cleansing oils involved. It's a big feat to get that put on and take it off every night.

Allison Stewart: We've got this lovely text. "My name is Bonnie and Wicked is what made me fall in love with theater. My aunt saw the original cast production in 2003 and came back with a soundtrack and a popular shirt, and I was hooked. I was eight years old at the time, and after receiving the soundtrack, I would wake up every morning and listen to the soundtrack and belt Defying Gravity. Between Broadway and regional productions, I've seen Wicked five times now. It remains my favorite Broadway show." Bonnie, thank you for texting us. We want to hear about your thoughts about Wicked. When you saw it on Broadway, what the show means to you. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. That is a segue into my questions about Defying Gravity. Stephen, it's the show-stopping number. What did you know you wanted to achieve with this song? Because it comes at the end of the first act, and that song is always really important in the structure and the arc of a musical.

Stephen Schwartz: When I first outlined my ideas for the show, about 5 years before it actually opened on Broadway, so now we're talking 25 years ago. This was an outline that I prepared to bring to Winnie Holzman my collaborator and the book writer of the show, just to discuss how we would structure it. There were three main tent poles in that outline, and the end of the first act was that she would fly, that the wicked witch would come into her power and she would fly. Very, very early, I'm not into piano, so, unfortunately, I can't play this for your listeners, but I'll sort of do the bad job of singing it, very early, I had that riff that goes, "Pom, pom, pom, pom, pom." The kind of low-end sound that I felt sounded like power, and so that was around for a long time before I actually wrote the song.

I do want to say that one of the things that I think is amazing about that moment in the show, is that in addition to the song and the spectacular performance now by Alyssa, you have other theater artists working at the absolute top of their craft. You have, first of all, Joe Montello's brilliant staging, and you have the fantastic costume idea. I don't want to give things away because, Alison, if you had not seen it until last week, then maybe there are other people haven't seen it, but there's a fantastic costume trick. Kenny Posner's lighting I feel is still the best lighting that I've ever seen in the musical theater. All of that happens at once, and I think that's part of the power of that moment.

Alison Stewart: Alyssa, the power of the moment was also the power of your voice, of the actor's voice who's got to tackle this song. What goes into preparing to sing that song for you?

Alyssa Fox: I think it makes it so much more impactful when you go through the entire arc of the first act and then finally land at that song. It's incredibly hard vocally because it starts in a different place than it ends, and there's a big buildup to this big moment. There's also a lot of technical things that you have to think of while you're singing the song. There's a lot of moving parts that go into that song. I think the biggest part for me is the emotional outpouring that that song is, and to go up. When I fly at the end of the act, I can see the first few rows of audience members and I can experience their breath as I rise in the air. It's just the most touching thing that I've ever experienced on stage.

Alison Stewart: We were fortunate, our colleagues at NPR's Tiny Desk had you all in to perform, so we pulled a little bit of that acapella, very pure version of Defying Gravity from NPRs Tiny Desk.

[MUSIC - Stephen Schwartz: Defying Gravity]

Alison Stewart: How do you follow all that? Let's follow it with Lindy calling in from Westchester. Hi, Lindy. Thank you for calling All Of It.

Lindy: Hi. Thank you. Thank you for taking my call and thank you for such a beautiful work of art to all of you. I want to tell you two things that were really important in my life. One, when I saw Wicked for the first time, it was one of the first times that I was able to really get a handle on, and which I've given to my children and other people since then about how people might see someone as evil and not understand their backstory, and not understand their motivations, and the switching of the good and evil, and the themes of persisting in what you believe is right.

I love those themes and they meant so much to me. Also, my father and I had a really difficult relationship and when I first heard the song For Good, I still get choked up just thinking about it, about how it so closely brings everything into focus. I really appreciate all of it, so thank you.

Alison Stewart: Aw, thank you for calling in Lindy. That was such a lovely call. That song For Good is one of those that really touches people. Actually Jason, can we play For Good? I'm going to ask you to switch this up so people can hear a little bit about it. Stephen, tell us about writing this song, For Good.

Stephen Schwartz: It took me a long time to have the courage to write this song because I knew that it was the heart of the show and that if we got that song right, then we could have the show, but if we didn't, it didn't really matter much what else we did. When I finally felt ready to do it, I called Winnie again, the book writer and my collaborator, and was just talking about the ideas for the song, what was really going on. In the course of the conversation, Winnie said, "Well, they've had such an impact on one another, they've really changed each other for good," and I stopped her and I said, "Okay, I'm hanging up now because that's such a great title," because obviously for good means, both forever and for the better.

Then it so happened that my daughter, Jessica, was visiting me and I went downstairs with a yellow pad and I said to her, "Okay, so your friend, Sarah," that she's had for years and years, "I want you to imagine that you're never going to be able to see Sarah again, and you have one chance to tell her what she's meant to you. What would you say?" Basically what Jessica said was kind of the first verse of the song, about people coming into our lives for a reason and how you help each other, et cetera. Between Winnie's title and what my daughter said that gave me the launch to write the song.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear For Good.

[MUSIC - Stephen Schwartz: For Good]

Alison Stewart: That's Alyssa Fox and McKenzie Kurtz from the NPR Tiny Desk. McKenzie, when we first meet Glinda, she's just so extra. She's sort of Tracy Flick meets mean girl [chuckles] meets Cher from Clueless sort of, but she really is lovable underneath. What do you think makes Glinda lovable at the end of the day?

McKenzie Kurtz: It is true. She's very extra. She quite literally arrives to Shiz University on top of her luggage, on a luggage cart. I think Glinda feels things so hard, whether it's the highest highs or the lowest lows, she feels everything so deeply, and so the love she feels for Elphaba is so intense. I think in Act 2, we see that that extraness start to dim a little bit as she is struggling to-- She gets everything that she really wants, but then she's struggling with the fact that her best friend is gone. She's going back and forth with the right and wrong and then ultimately it's about her best friend and the love she has for her best friend. I feel like I do my job well when I have people at the end of the night that say, "I hated you and I loved you all at the same time." I think you have to love her. She loves so hard and she feels everything so intensely.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a bit of your performance from the Tiny Desk concert from our friends at NPR. This is you performing Popular. This is a moment when Glinda is giving Elphaba a makeover.

[MUSIC - Stephen Schwartz: Popular]

Alison Stewart: We're celebrating the 20th anniversary of Wicked with Alyssa Fox, currently playing Elphaba, Mackenzie Kurtz, playing Glinda, and composer Stephen Schwartz. Stephen, what's your hope for the next decade of Wicked?

Stephen Schwartz: I hope that the show remains in really good shape. I saw it again, obviously, because I go from time to time to check on it. I saw it just a couple of weeks ago and it is so well-maintained. Of course, first of all, Mackenzie and Alyssa are terrific, but the whole company is really strong and technically it's in really good shape. The sound is really in good shape. Dan Micciche leading the orchestra is doing a great job. It's very important to us that if it's someone like you, Alison, who hasn't seen the show and is coming for the first time, you have the best possible experience that we can give you. We don't just try to rest on our laurels and feel like, "Well, we've been there forever, so who cares?" My hope is that we can continue to maintain the show at such a peak level for the rest of the time that it would be running.

Alison Stewart: Here's a text, our final of the segment. "My family saw Wicked during January of 2022 when we were nervous about entering the world again after the pandemic and seeing it warmed our soul and felt we could do this, we could live again. When my seven-year-old belts out Defying Gravity, all is right in the world. Thank you for this musical." Thank you to Stephen Schwartz, Alyssa Fox, and Mackenzie Kurtz for joining us to celebrate Wicked's 20th anniversary. Thank you so much for being with us.

Stephen Schwartz: Thank you, Alison.

McKenzie Kurtz: Thank you so much.

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