Stephen Schwartz

The jolly green giant of a Broadway musical known as “Wicked” recently celebrated its one-year anniversary on the Great White Way with a weekend-long series of festivities. (If you wonder how much of an effect “ Wicked” has had on Broadway, try getting a ticket to the show. It lost the Tony Award to “Avenue Q,” but “Wicked” is currently to Broadway, what “Rent” used to be in 1996, and what “The Phantom of the Opera” was in the late 1980s.) Last Monday, the celebration was topped with a tribute to popular Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz titled “One Wicked Night with Stephen Schwartz & Valerie Smaldone.”

The packed audience at the Kaye Playhouse, a Hunter College auditorium, was filled mostly with relatively young musical theater fans. A New York Times feature story recently referred to such fans as Menzelites – named after “Wicked” leading lady and recent Tony winner Idina Menzel. Many such fans wore green and black clothing and clutched copies of the “Wicked” ; vocal selections.

The event even began with Valerie Smaldone asking the audience “Do we have any ‘Wicked’ fans in the house?” – a question which was immediately greeted with applause (this applause also greeted nearly every single Schwartz musical that was mentioned that night.) As a host, Valerie provoked to be both admiring and professional towards Stephen Schwartz, always adding compliments while also provoking intelligent conversation.

In addition to “Wicked,” Stephen Schwartz is the composer of a number of shows that have become amateur and regional musical theater standards such as “Godspell” and “Pippin” (which is set to receive a New York City benefit concert later this month) as well some cult favorites including “Working,” “The Baker’s Wife,” “ Rags,” and “Children of Eden.” Valerie Smaldone, who admitted to being a longtime fan of Schwartz’s musicals, is a mid-day radio host for 106.7 Lite-FM.

The evening began with a conversation between Schwartz and Smaldone, which eventually evolved into concert segments with Schwartz singing at the piano, as well as question-and-answer periods with the audience. A main topic of discussion involved the creation of “Wicked.” Schwartz described how he learned of Gregory MacGuire’s book while on vacation, and immediately decided that it was one of the greatest ideas he had ever heard of – something that had to be made into a Broadway musical. Schwartz, however, had work ahead: Universal Pictures owned the rights and was planning to make a film of it. Eventually, Schwartz convinced studio heads that the piece would not work on screen, but could potentially make a successful Broadway musical.

Schwartz’s performances at the piano included a show tune melody featuring “Day By Day” from “Godspell,” and “Magic to Do” and “Corner of the Sky” from “Pippin,” as well as several of his pop songs. And in an attempt to convey how the songs of a musical can change during the course of its development, he sang “Where’s the Party,” a song which was originally set to be Fiyero’s song in Act One, which was later replaced with “Dancing Through Life.”

The second half of the program included performances from “Wicked,” not from “Wicked” lead performers, but from the show’s understudies, including Stacie Morgan Lewis (Glinda), Shoshana Bean (Elphaba), and Kristoffer Cusick (Fiyero). But perhaps most stunning in the concert were two Stephen Schwartz songs performed by Liz Callaway, including “Lion Tamer” from “The Magic Show” and “Meadowlark” from “The Baker’s Wife.”

After attending the event, one was likely to have – one – gained more respect for Stephen Schwartz’s musical scores and – two – felt a strong desire to see “Wicked” again.

Kaye Playhouse

Located at Hunter College