An oral history of Elphaba, one of Broadway’s most empowering roles
Idina Menzel, Ana Gasteyer and others open up on the pleasures and perils of playing the iconic “Wicked” character eight times a week.
There may be no more spellbinding protagonist in contemporary musical theater than Elphaba Thropp, that green-skinned wallflower with a penchant for soaring over Oz and belting battle cries from the heavens.
For two decades, audiences have marched to Broadway’s Gershwin Theatre and venues around the globe to absorb Elphaba’s tale in “Wicked.” A loose adaptation of a 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, the stage show from composer Stephen Schwartz and librettist Winnie Holzman reimagines the “Wizard of Oz” antagonist as a wide-eyed college outcast steered toward exile by a conniving con man and a scapegoating society.
Featuring iconic show tunes, dazzling stagecraft and a potent portrayal of female friendship — between that obstinate Elphaba and the bubbly Glinda the Good — “Wicked” has grossed more than $1.6 billion on Broadway while enduring as its fourth-longest-running show. As Cynthia Erivo immortalizes Elphie in two “Wicked” movies, the first of which hits theaters Friday, we break down the role with seven actresses who have played the part onstage.
- Idina Menzel: The “Rent,” “Enchanted” and “Frozen” star won a Tony for originating the role of Elphaba in 2003. In 2006, she reprised the part for the West End production.
- Stephanie J. Block: A Tony winner for 2018’s “The Cher Show,” Block played Elphaba in early workshops, then understudied Menzel during the San Francisco tryout. She at last stepped into the role onstage in the first North American tour before taking over on Broadway in 2007.
- Ana Gasteyer: The “Saturday Night Live” actress portrayed Elphaba in the 2005 Chicago production, then got green as a Broadway replacement a year later.
- Jennifer DiNoia: After serving as the standby in 2007 in Chicago, DiNoia played the part on and off around the world (Broadway, the West End, South Korea, Australia, the North American tour) for more than 15 years.
- Mandy Gonzalez: The “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” veteran — currently subbing for Nicole Scherzinger once a week in “Sunset Blvd.” — defied gravity on Broadway in 2010.
- Lindsay Mendez: A Tony recipient for 2018’s “Carousel” and a nominee for the recent “Merrily We Roll Along” revival, Mendez took up Elphaba’s broomstick and pointy hat in 2013.
- Mary Kate Morrissey: Broadway’s current Wicked Witch stepped into the spotlight this year, having first played the part on tour in 2015.
(Responses have been edited for length and clarity.)
The Road to Oz
Block: Stephen Schwartz gave me a ring and left me a message in February of 2000. At this particular point, they were simply going to Universal Studios to try to get backing for the play. So I would stand up with Stephen at the piano in a boardroom and sing the tunes. Several months later, it was a reading of Act 1. Several months after that, it was a two-week workshop presentation with Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda. I was eventually asked to be a part of the original company — but, of course, not as Elphaba. We all know Idina Menzel was, as they call her, Mother Elphaba.
Menzel: I had a really good audition up until the point that I sang “Defying Gravity.” At the end, I cracked on the big note at the top. “You won’t bring meee down” — that didn’t come out very good. So I looked over at the accompanist and said, “I’m going to do that again.” I backed up a little, nailed the note and then finished the song — “oh-ohhh!” I think that mistake is actually what got me the role because [director] Joe Mantello said he could really see how fierce I could be.
Gonzalez: I remember sitting in the ensemble for a workshop of Act 1 with [future Tony winners] Christian Borle and Celia Keenan-Bolger and seeing just how exciting it was. After that, my life went on a different trajectory. But two years into my run at “In the Heights,” “Wicked” came back and offered me Elphaba on Broadway. So I got to fly, too — it was truly an amazing circle.
Mendez: I saw the original with Idina and Kristin, and I was absolutely taken with it — but I didn’t see myself onstage one bit. At that time and even now, looking at myself versus someone like Idina, I don’t see a lot of crossover. When the time came and I got offered it, I still was like, “Are you sure?”
Morrissey: I saw Shoshana Bean and Megan Hilty in “Wicked” around 2005. I went to Catholic school, so for dress-down days I was the girl who would be in her little kilt with my “Wicked” T-shirt repping my favorite show. When you spend so much time on your own as a theater kid just singing along to your “Wicked” CD, it sort of trains your voice. You learn to sing by parroting Idina Menzel.
The outsiders
After opening in the aftermath of the Wicked Witch’s death-by-water, “Wicked” flashes back and introduces Elphaba as a fumbling Shiz University freshman whose fantastical streak — that green skin, plus fits of uncontrollable sorcery — makes her an instant pariah.
Menzel: I remember leaving my audition and going to the stairwell and crying because I felt, “I get this character.” I didn’t have such great esteem at that point in my life — I had a lot of ups and downs in my career since “Rent,” and momentum had gone away — so I just needed it for many reasons. I identified with the young woman who questioned when it was okay to have power and show anger and show vulnerability.
Block: I’m kind of opening up some wounds here, and I certainly don’t want to play the victim in any way, shape or form. But Stephen Schwartz would always say, “Man, the way you sing ‘I’m Not That Girl’ …” And I said, “Well, because I wasn’t that girl.” They went with Idina, and I completely honor that. I think she’s a remarkable artist. But this is what Elphie is all about. She enters the story with great hope and then finds out that she’s never going to be that girl. At the end, she rises up and finds her purpose. That essentially parallels my journey with this incredible piece.
Gasteyer: When I left “Saturday Night Live,” I really set my sights on working onstage. I didn’t come up from the traditional ranks. I was a musical-theater major for a year, but that was it. I didn’t know how to tap. I couldn’t get through a dance call. I was an outsider on Broadway. And I think comedians are all sort of outsiders, to a degree. So that was a comfortable place to stand, for sure.
DiNoia: When this show came into my life, I was still very naive and quite green — no pun intended. I admired Elphaba because she was so outspoken and just stood up for what was right. I wanted to not just play Elphaba onstage, but I wanted to be her.
Mendez: In some ways, Elphaba is every theater kid. We all felt like outsiders in some way, and that’s how we all ended up here.
‘The Wizard and I’
Elphaba’s yearning first song arrives early in Act 1, when the Shiz headmistress, Madame Morrible, says the student’s budding magical talent might just catch the Wizard of Oz’s eye. “Once I’m with the Wizard,” Elphaba sings, “my whole life will change.”
Morrissey: Elphaba is a cynic up until that point, and then she gets a sliver of someone saying, “Hey, your life could be so different than what you imagined.” And she lets herself believe it, which changes the trajectory of her life. Sometimes I just think in that song about how I let myself believe that I could perform Broadway — and now I’m doing it.
Gonzalez: It’s such a vulnerable moment for Elphaba. She gets to be so excited that somebody told her that she’s special. In that moment, to be so innocent and free and hopeful, it’s really beautiful.
DiNoia: The songs in “Wicked” have meant different things to me over different periods of my life, but “The Wizard and I” has always remained this song full of hope and endless possibilities. Even if you’re having a terrible day, it just lifts you immediately.
Menzel: It’s the dream “I want” song for any young woman in a musical.
Mendez: It kind of set the pace for the rest of the night for me. If that one felt good, then the rest of the show was going to feel good. And if that one felt shaky? Oh boy, buckle up.
Getting green
Inhabiting Elphaba means, of course, many hours applying green makeup and plenty more washing it away — sometimes long after departing Oz.
Gonzalez: I remember people would come backstage, and they would just want to see the shower because it was coated in green. You think as much as you scrub that it’s going to come off — but it just doesn’t.
Menzel: I fell through the hole [in the stage during her final performance on Broadway] and broke my ribs and got taken to the hospital in a full face of green makeup. As they were wheeling me out on the gurney, that’s the one thing I said: “Make sure you bring Neutrogena face wash!” Because that was the only thing that would get it out.
Mendez: I was dating at that time — or trying to date — and that was always a tough explanation. People think you’re ill because you can’t ever fully get that out of your skin. I mean, months later I still had it in my pores and in my scalp. It was hard out there to be a single witch.
DiNoia: Everybody looks so beautiful in it, and I always loved wearing it. But I had to make sure I brought different pillowcases wherever I was playing the role because you leave prints of green during the night.
Gasteyer: I had an ear infection or something a year and a half after I left the show, and the ENT was like, “What is this brilliant-cerulean green?”
Block: I would get facials or whatnot, and they would see the green in my hairline, so they’d ask. I knew if I said that I was playing Elphaba in “Wicked” there would be subsequent conversations about “Can we get tickets through you?” or “My niece has always wanted to be a singer.” So I would just tell people that I was a clown, and that pretty much ended the conversation right there.
‘Defying Gravity’
Disillusioned by the Wizard’s suppression of speaking animals, Elphaba rejects his offer of a partnership, accepts her newfound fugitive status and soars away from the Emerald City on her newly enchanted broomstick. All the while, she belts the canonical anthem of empowerment that ends Act 1. “I think I’ll try defying gravity,” she sings. “And you can’t pull me down.”
Menzel: It just embodies everything that I felt as young woman, and I continue to feel now, about embracing my own power. Stephen Schwartz is a genius. He writes incredible lyrics and chord progressions that just tug at your heartstrings and feel like the perfect complement to everything you’re feeling as the character. It’s such a gift to be able to sing this song.
Morrissey: Everyone has a story where someone has told them they can’t do something, and they’ve said, “F you, I’m going to do it anyway.” Sometimes, I let my eyes lower a little bit while I’m singing, and I can see people with their hands on their mouth or wiping their tears. I feel like that really fuels me.
Block: “Defying Gravity” is all about acting. It is all about showing the audience that there is a transformation happening within this character. So for me, it’s far less about hitting the right notes or doing an incredible riff. It’s all about staying true to those lyrics.
Mendez: That one’s a beast. I had some issues getting into the flying apparatus during that song and getting my cape caught in it — and if the cape gets caught, you don’t fly. I always remember being really stressed because I had a couple of no-fly shows, which are super “womp, womp.”
Gonzalez: I never had a no-fly show, but I did have a show where the contraption went up and then, as I was singing my final note, it started to swing back and forth like a pendulum. It turned out that a washer in the machine had fallen out. On my last day, the stagehands put that washer on a plaque that said, “Thank you for flying with us eight shows a week.”
Surviving Oz
There are few more demanding roles in musical theater than Elphaba, who sings on a dozen songs while navigating an emotionally draining arc of self-actualization.
Gasteyer: Honestly, 99.9 percent of playing Elphaba comes down to just vocal, vocal, vocal. All you are doing is protecting your voice, because that role is absurdly big, and it’s relentless. You live like a nun. Whenever you see other Elphabas, it’s like a club. I ran into Lindsay last year on Fire Island, and her husband was like, “You guys have such a shorthand.” She said, “Yeah, we’re all trauma bonded from the vocal work of that show.”
Morrissey: It can be pretty lonely because your voice is like currency. Everything I do — even this interview — is costing me, so I have to think about how much currency I have for the day.
Menzel: I mean, it’s kind of my fault. I asked Stephen to take the end of “Defying Gravity” up an octave.
Gonzalez: I remember just being totally terrified by the role. The assistant director, Lisa [LeGuillou], gave me some really great advice. She said, “There’s a treadmill upstairs — not to get in shape or anything, but you should really get on that treadmill and start singing the music.” I don’t know how she knew, but I got on that treadmill and sang the songs, and all of a sudden I forgot about the fear.
‘No Good Deed’
The character’s final solo comes late in Act 2, when a flailing attempt to save her lover, Fiyero, ends with Elphaba embracing her Wicked Witch persona and ruing the consequences of her benevolent actions. “No good deed goes unpunished,” she sings. “That’s my new creed.”
Mendez: That one’s so fun because finally your hair is down, and you’ve got the smoke, and you’re conjuring the spells.
Gasteyer: That’s my favorite song to perform. I love the way it’s written. I love its ups and downs. I love how it ascends emotionally. I always felt, acting-wise, the most connected to that song.
Menzel: It’s the perfect 11 o’clock number. It’s super diva, and your hair is blowing Beyoncé-style, and there’s smoke around your feet, and you can step into all of those feelings you feel as a woman. You’re allowed to show your ugliness, and it’s liberating to sort of tell everyone to go f— off.
Gonzalez: It’s the rush before the song that comes to mind. You run off the stage, run through the orchestra and crouch into this little lift. All of a sudden, you have to come up like a rock star and go, “Fiyero!”
Block: A lot of my mistakes that I made in the readings are still a part of the script and the score today. In one of the readings, I looked off the page and sang, “Too much, too much to mention” — I repeated “too much, too much” because I didn’t look at the right words. Now, that still lives within “No Good Deed.”
A lasting spell
DiNoia: Playing Elphaba made me grow up in a very specific way. There were times when she kind of meshed into my real life — in good ways and maybe not in good ways. So I really learned about myself and learned what I was capable of handling when playing Elphaba.
Mendez: I think “Wicked” did and does and will always resonate with people. We’ve all been through those moments in our lives when we felt misunderstood, when we didn’t belong. We’ve all been through those moments when people have made us feel loved and supported. We’ve also had to make mistakes, and we’ve had to make choices.
Gasteyer: It’s sort of hard to imagine that only 20 years ago this was the case, but there really weren’t opportunities for female leads in film and television. I saw Idina and Kristin in “Wicked,” and I remember thinking, “Why would I go and just try to be some stand-up’s wife in a sitcom when there are these massive, meaningful parts with range and depth [onstage]?” The fact that there were two female roles that encapsulated a lot of the female experience just made the show really meaningful.
Block: I knew at the time of the readings that it was going to be an epic piece and one that was going to live on for generations. You have this extraordinary storytelling of unexpected friendship, and stories of sacrifice and love and commitment and purpose. All of the themes within “Wicked” are just so deep.
Menzel: It’s really a love story between two women, and it speaks to every person out there who feels unseen or different or bullied. It acknowledges them. It embraces them. It says you are loved in all of your messiness, and that you need to step into your power.