So Wicked is based on a book by Gregory Maguire called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Stephen Schwartz, a composer and lyricist, found the book on vacation and wanted to turn it into a musical, but the rights already belonged to Universal who wanted to make it into a movie. He petitioned the company to let him do a stage production and succeeded. To figure out the best way to condense the book, Schwartz brought on writer Winnie Holzman. It took them a year and they ended up with something far from the book and more accurately a retelling of the 1939 film adaptation of Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but from the villain perspective, focusing more on the relationship between the witches than addressing the differences between good intentions with bad results and bad intentions with bad results which is what the book focuses on. Now I haven't read the book, and I haven't seen the play (but I really want to) so I can only go off the info I can find and hope it's accurate. Let me know if it isn't. I got introduced to Wicked when I was in high school when we sang Defying Gravity in choir, and I instantly fell in love. There haven't been as many runs of this show as others I've showcased since this only began in 2003, but it is one of the bigger ones that most people think of when they think theatre. So if you get the chance to see it: take it.
Peace.
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