There’s plenty of double-crossing to get through before Dorothy’s arrival (whose appearance here turns out to be part of an Oz psychological operation to draw Elphaba out of hiding). But it doesn’t amount to two hours of story – the stage show clips through the same plot in around half the time – and the padding is as obvious as it is exhausting.
Grande, in particular, often seems to be trying to walk through her scenes as slowly as possible: as a performer she has a range of four octaves and around 1.6 emotions, and as such Glinda’s smaller moments simply aren’t dramatically interesting enough to merit this moonily protracted approach.
Erivo is a little better – you certainly buy her inner torment – but the pair’s strained friendship rings false, and what should be piercing, impassioned moments are by turns frivolous and sappy.
