Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba Is Black

Before Wicked, I knew Cynthia Erivo was a star. I’ve seen Widows and that Tony Award performance of “I’m Here” from The Color Purple (you know the one). After Wicked, I know that she is so talented she can break me with nothing more than a key change and a chin quiver. In the final moments of Wicked, its broader social and political commentary comes into focus. The wizard is outed as a fraud (both Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible play these scenes with the pitch-perfect precision that comes only with their experience) who is trying to use Elphaba’s powers to oppress animals (who are walking, talking, law-abiding citizens in Oz). She pushes back against the naked emperor of Emerald City and refuses to do his bidding. Her supposed best friend Glinda folds immediately, and like the 55% of white women who voted for Trump, she chose her own selfish interests over what was good and right — and over supporting a woman of colour. It wasn’t hard to draw a straight line between Wicked’s allegory and the current political climate in which a raging lying dictator is manipulating people into following his dissent into tyrannical control and plans of mass subjugation. But where the film could have veered into corny over-the-top territory, it’s Erivo who steadies the proverbial flying broom, grounding the story back to Oz and back to Elphaba, a girl who is just trying to do good.