Last night, we took Sonia to see the musical Wicked at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts (the old Oriental Theater, aptly enough). The key role of Elphaba was played by the understudy (Jennifer DiNoia), but like the rest of the cast, she won the audience over with her energetic performance. Sonia loved the play, especially the first half. The second half spends too much energy trying to pull together the threads of the wobbly plot (talking animals? love triangles? mobs and martyrs?) into something like coherence. But it was all good fun.

The play of course turns The Wizard of Oz on its head, retelling the story from the perspective of the witches. I'll set aside the issue of whether Frank Baum's original Oz novels were political allegories, but I've long been fascinated by the geopolitical overtones of the 1939 film version, in which quirky, individualistic Americans liberate the citizens of exotic distant lands by overthrowing a fascistic regime. The flying monkeys, in particular, foreshadow editorial cartoon images of Japanese troops from WWII.

The musical takes all of this and gives it a clever postmodern spin. History, as the Wizard's song "Wonderful" spells out explicitly, is all a question of narrative persuasion. Anyone can be made a hero or villain, you just switch the storyline. Even witches can be heroines.

Given that, it seems odd that the play would end with the heroine adopting what is essentially a Stalinist view of History. Like the victims of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s, Ephalba is persuaded to accept the role of scapegoat, to confess to crimes she has not committed, because objectively (using the term in its Stalinist sense), this falsity is historically correct: it helps clear the path for the proper historical narrative to unfold in reality. Ephalba allows herself to be reviled as the Wicked Witch of the West, hiding herself away rather than challenging the myth, because objectively that is for the best: it solidifies Glinda's standing as the Good Witch of the North. It's the quickest root to establishing the true dictatorship of the proletariat, followed by the end of history.

Which all reminds me of the time my buddy Frank got me in trouble by making me laugh during 11th grade American history class. The teacher was discussing Japan's wartime Prime Minister when Frank leaned over and whispered in my ear. Using his best Dorothy voice, he asked "Tojo too?," and followed it immediately with Glinda's affirmative "Tojo too!"