The Enduring Appeal of the Romantic Musical

One of my students was recently asked to analyze the longstanding popular appeal of Les Misérables. As I helped with the research, I began to notice some of the thematic parallels to Wicked. To begin with both are adapted from novels, the former by Victor Hugo and the later by Gregory Maguire.  They are also both influenced by historical events. The musicals are not only noteworthy for their theatricality: the costumes, the songs, the scenery, but also for the way in which they portray issues that are an integral part of human interaction and relationships. There is corruption, struggles against authority, the pain of unrealized love, friendship, sacrifice, compassion, despair, hope, determination and faith.

Les Misérables first opened on Broadway in 1987. Theatergoers assume that the bloody French Revolution of 1789 is the setting for Les Misérables, but it is actually the July Revolution, which occurs nearly 50 years later, in 1830. General Jean Maximilien Lamarque was a general in Napoleon’s army and an opponent of the restoration of the monarchy under the House of Bourbon (to which Louis XVIII and Charles X, the younger brothers of the guillotined Louis XVI belonged) and the House of Orleans, to which Louis Phillippe, a cousin of the Bourbons and the king in 1830, belonged. Lamarque was sympathetic to the plight of the poor and his impending death threatened to upset the progress they had achieved under him, causing small groups of supporters of the republic to rise in rebellion in Paris. As in the musical, the rebellion was quickly and brutally put down, with heavy casualties.  Wicked opened on Broadway in 2003, six months after President George W. Bush authorized Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his oppressive regime in Iraq.

In the adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel, Eponine and Cosette have both had lives marked by poverty and hardship. In the beginning, Eponine is the selfish privileged child of the socially opportunistic Thenardiers, who appropriate the money that Cosette's mother has paid them for her care for themselves. Eventually, the family ends up living on the street, resorting to petty crime and conning the unsuspecting. Cosette’s origins are not highlighted in the musical but she is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy but feckless student and Fantine, a naïve young orphan from the working classes whom he seduces and later abandons, the consequence of a power imbalance against which Fantine has no recourse. Cosette is later adopted and her life from then on is one of comfort and security. She gets a fairytale ending while Eponine’s life takes a downward turn.  

The personality of the two male love interests are at first a study in contrasts. In Les Misérables, former law student  Marius is intense and idealistic; in Wicked Fiyero appears entitled, vain and superficial. He just wants to have a good time, is dismissive of anything related to academia and tries to motivate others to follow his example. Both come from socially prominent families. Marius’ grandfather is a wealthy royalist and Fiyero is the Prince of the Winkies. Both young men become champions of the rights of the dispossessed, the most accurate translation for the French term misérable.  Marius and his friends protest a return to a royalist government that has violated the rights of the common people. Fiyero helps Elphaba to free a lion cub after he sees her outrage at the violation of the animals’ rights in Oz.

The love triangle in both musicals especially resonates with a female audience. In some stage versions, Cosette is a fair skinned blonde while Eponine is dark haired actresses with dusky skin, in a subtle nod to the contrast between innocence and awareness. Cosette is portrayed as just another pretty face without the maturity or experience with the realities of life that make for character depth. Marius has known Eponine longer and is familiar with her character, but he predictably makes the conventional choice by falling in love with Cosette. Eponine's hard edges and street savvy persona have been watered down in the musical, making it difficult to dislike her even though she has been mean to Cosette as a child, because many women can sympathize with her pain in loving someone out of your league who doesn’t love you back.  

The situation is reversed in Wicked. In the beginning, Glinda, blonde, pretty, wealthy and popular and Fiyero are a couple, sharing many of the same traits, while Elphaba, the dark haired, green skinned outcome of a liaison between the wife of the mayor of Munchkinland and an itinerant peddler is the outsider. She thinks Fiyero will never be able to see beyond the surface but he does and ends up choosing her and committing to her goals, which shows how he has grown as a character. Love inspires his commitment. Marius takes the opposite path. He is committed to his goals but his love is shallow until his experiences change him, maturing his understanding of what it is to really love.

Different forms of love motivate the sacrifices that are made in both stories. Jean Valjean sacrifices his freedom to keep his sister’s family from starving. Fantine sacrifices her well being for that of her daughter. Elphaba sacrifices her public reputation in order to save the animals from abuse and Fiyero from dying. Eponine gives her life to save Marius. Glinda sacrifices her ambition to be a witch.

What distinctively differentiates Wicked from Les Misérables is that Cosette and Eponine have known each other as children but they never reconcile their differences to become friends as adults.  Love for the same man also gets in the way. Eponine’s actions are not fueled by her concern for Cosette’s welfare, but by her love for Marius. In contrast, although at first, they actively dislike each other when they first meet, the friendship between Glinda and Elphaba forms the backbone of the story and becomes a relationship that is even stronger than their romantic rivalry. As Scarlett Harris writes in her November 4, 2014 article on Junkee. com (http://junkee.com/the-musical-wicked-is-as-much-about-feminism-as-it-is-about-witches/44428), “Where many musicals position romantic relationships as the be all and end all of companionship, Elphaba and Glinda’s alliance is most important: they complement each other’s attributes and shortcomings, while supporting the other’s magical and political goals.” Most importantly, she says of the women's relationship with Fiyero, “each witch is willing to give him up to spare their friendship.”

Perhaps, as other critics have suggested, it is a reflection of the times during which the stories were set. Women had no identity except as wives and mothers during the time of Les Misérables so their only form of validation and acceptance was through the men in their lives, which is why their roles are secondary to that of the men in the musical. It is just the opposite in Wicked: the women and their actions drive the story while the male roles are peripheral. The women make their own choices, whether for love and marriage or individual development, and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What unifies both musicals is hope, the hope for a better, brighter and happier future, a common dream for audiences everywhere.