Wicked: For Good spoilers incoming…
As November rolls around and we mark Disability History Month here in the UK (20th November – 20th December) I find myself thinking about the stories we tell, past and present, the ones on stage, on screen, and amongst our own communities.
There is no doubt that stories shape how we see each other. For many Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent people, me included, those stories have so often been written through the lens of tragedy.
As someone who came into this world with a difference, born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta type three, my own life was marked as one of sadness. In fact, heartbreakingly my own mother says my birth was seen a tragedy rather than a cause for celebration. “I’m sorry” filled people’s mouths when they heard, as though my diagnosis was a death sentence. People didn’t come to visit Mum in hospital after she gave birth, because they felt sorry for us. A not too unfamiliar story for many Disabled people.
We are often marked as objects of inspiration, a cautionary tale to remind you to be grateful for your lot. We are the Bond villains and the damned. We are never portrayed as ones with agency, complexity or joy; never individuals with lives outside of our disability identity.
That’s why a small but powerful change in the second instalment of the box office smash hit, Wicked has stayed with me. In the original stage version, the character Nessarose, a wheelchair user, once longed to be “cured” to walk again, which is what happens at the end of the stage show when Elephaba (Cynthia Erivo) uses magic on her silver slippers (later ruby) so that she can walk. But in the latest and final instalment of the cinematic adaptation Wicked: For Good, her wish isn’t about walking or to become ‘normal’- whatever that means. It’s about magic. Ultimately, Nessarose wants to feel love again – a normal human experience. So instead of walking, as in the musical, we see her fly.
Giles Keyte/ Universal-Pictures
Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz has said of the change that he and the Winnie Holzman (the screenwriter and book writer of the stage show)“learned … from the PWD [people with disabilities] community” that having Nessarose’s life “solved” by walking sent the wrong message.
“I am so happy with the change, the old narrative was outdated,” – Marissa Abode, the actor who plays Nessarose, and who is a wheelchair user, has also said.
