Broadway Across Canada presents Wicked, May 28 to June 29 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton St., Vancouver. Tickets start at $35, available at ticketmaster.ca.
The name Madame Morrible is about as subtle as a Kansas tornado.
"It rhymes with horrible for a reason," says Kathy Fitzgerald, who plays the nasty character in the touring production of Wicked. "She's just awful."
Based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the Tony Award-winning musical adaptation - which flies through Vancouver May 28 to June 29 - is the untold story of the witches of Oz. Long before Dorothy and her dog Toto are blown into the famous fantasyland, two other young women meet at Shiz University. Green-skinned social outcast Elphaba becomes unlikely friends with her popular, blonde roommate Glinda. Respectively, the two students grow up to become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good, their divergent paths in life heavily influenced by their headmistress Madame Morrible.
"Basically she's the nemesis to the two witches. She's the bad guy, she's the antagonist of the piece," says Fitzgerald, who played the part for a year and a half on Broadway before joining the touring show.
Madame Morrible immediately recognizes Elphaba's natural magical abilities and, believing these talents will be of use to the Wizard of Oz, she manipulates the young witch to help advance her own career. But her cruel intentions are not revealed right away.
"In the beginning you think she's just a sweet schoolmarm, you know, and she's not going to cause any havoc," Fitzgerald says. "You don't really know at the top of the show that she's going to be horrible. You think, 'Oh, what a nice old lady,' and it's kind of fun to do that twist and to go to that dark place."
While performing Madame Morrible's dastardly deeds, Fitzgerald dons some of the most elaborate costumes in the production. Her Elizabethanstyle gowns are corseted, ruffled, beaded and very heavily - so heavy, in fact, that she has to do regular maintenance on her back.
A seasoned stage actress, Fitzgerald usually takes on comic roles, so playing the villain has been a fun change with some unique challenges.
"Even though these are completely made-up people, you have to find the humanness and some comedy in them so they're not just one-dimensional, because nobody's just all bad or all good."
While she insists she's actually very nice in real life, Fitzgerald admits she has grown rather fond of the particularly evil scene in which her character conjures up the storm that brings Dorothy to the Land of Oz.
"You feel like it's really a storm because the sound effects these day are so good. So that's kind of exciting, I really like that moment, it's really evil and really powerful."
Though Wicked's cast of characters and plot are based on Maguire's novel, Fitzgerald says the musical is "a different beast completely."
"The book is more sexual, frankly, and more political," she explains. "If you put the book to music, it would be too dark."
The socio-political undertones are still present in the musical, but have been dialed down, making the show appropriate for a wider audience.
"You can take a whole family and everyone can enjoy it for different reasons," Fitzgerald says, explaining it's smart enough for grown-ups to appreciate, while the visual spectacle and friendship storyline will appeal to youth. She's not surprised that the blockbuster show continues to fill theatres more than a decade after its 2003 premiere in New York.
"Everything works together, you know, the story's interesting, the music's exceptional and it's epic to look at," Fitzgerald says. "Some plays work and some don't and I've been in flops and I've been in hits and this one's definitely a hit."
