With prowling drones terrifying as flying monkeys, I finally saw “Wicked.” I traveled the yellow brick road alone but met Ella, a pre-teen witch in emerald sequins and pointy high tops.
Amped on holiday sweets and dreary news, had I conjured this sorceress? Nah. When she snarked, ”nope, not short for Elphaba,” then sweetly hummed “Defying Gravity,” I recognized a real Brooklyn girl.
Ella advised the film was only Part I. We’d learn who wins the good witch/bad witch battle royale in 2025.
Oh my, Hollywood! Surrender another 20 bucks to glimpse Dorothy?
Curses, my pretties, and your greedy double-dips too.
Frankly, after a divisive year and unprecedented violence, I didn’t mind snuggling with strangers to escape the gloom. In tough times, collective experience unites us. Give me pot-banging, Lady Liberty ticker-tape or scanning the Western sky, not for witches or UFOs, but together, awed by the eclipse.
No surprise Pew Research’s year-end roundup noted global pessimism about leadership, democracy, politics and economics entering 2025.
Many of us, at some point, in this fraught year, have been labeled “wicked.” Ask working moms how quickly the fall from good witch status. Or anyone whose politics diverge from prevailing winds.
Lately, everything whipsaws between good and evil. Executing a CEO father in Midtown was once wicked, but now the perp has ghoulish cheerleaders. A Good Samaritan straphanger was prosecuted, acquitted and soared from lockup to Army-Navy VIP in the click of a slipper.
City Hall and NYPD are stinking cauldrons of scandal, but pardons are floated before facts bubble up. Congestion pricing flies in every direction. I thought accused sorceresses were only burned at the stake abroad until a monster torched a woman on the F train.
It’s enough to send a girl escaping to the theater, seeking a magic wand. Somebody conjure movie magic and a coven of New Yorkers for two hours of joy.
I confess a soft-spot for “Wicked.” Long ago and faraway, during Pandemic Times, Broadway was shuttered for 18 months. Feeling like Munchkins in Oz, my family cheered the Big Apple back to life for 10 minutes when “Wicked” reopened and a curtain rose on hope.
There really is no place like home.
Ella’s youthful charm bewitched me. Our cinema thrummed with families, not Elphaba green, but five borough shades. Girl Scouts, book clubs and tweens buzzed the joint like a Bronx quinceañera.
Settling in, I imagined worse places to be next year.
We know how “The Wizard of Oz” ends. Ditto 1975’s “The Wiz,” where Diana Ross and Michael Jackson “ease on down the road” past iconic NYC landmarks to a glittering World Trade Center Oz.
Growing up watching the fable in Louisville with my schoolteacher mom, I suspected deeper drama beneath Dorothy’s gingham. Young New Yorkers sense lions, tigers and bears lurking too. Like a Yankee Auntie Em, I wanted to whisper “Don’t worry, Ella. The world feels so dangerous, but courage, brains, heart and gumption in the face of disaster can still power our dreams….if we all pitch in.”
Discovering the void behind the wizard’s curtain, and that brave and gritty girls, even those not in Kansas (or Kentucky) anymore, can achieve most anything, translated across generations just fine.
Sure, the film’s political, but shucks, Scarecrow, you’re dozing in a poppy field if you don’t think we’ll still be debating censorship, human rights, violence, propaganda, and bullying this time next year. Managing will take more than wishes and crystal balls. We’ll need our young people thoughtful and aware and ethical leaders doing their jobs.
The joyous comradery of a New York audience never disappoints. Our crowd cheered cheeky Bowen Yang of “Saturday Night Live” and Broadway’s original witches — Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.
We hollered together when one labeled wicked, buoyed by her younger self, stumbled, then stretched, to the sky. Broom and high notes soaring, suddenly I was eager for Part II — onscreen and a 2025 do-over.
New York really does deserve a chance to fly.
Let us all resolve to dig in, do right by our great city and try.
“Same time, same spot, next year?” I asked Ella, credits rolling. “I’ll be older then,” she answered, already wiser. “Not sure where I’ll be.”
We both agreed to spend 2025 defying gravity.
Wrapping up a wicked turn of division, fear and strife, I’ll gladly reup another 20 bucks to sit with somebody else’s daughter — or son — in hopes we’ve all flown a little higher by this time next year.
Koster is a New York lawyer.
