Wicked conjures precious little magic in dud sequel

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande return to Oz but find no sign of wonder or spectacle

- 

If your complaint about last year's Wicked was that it was so oddly lit that you could barely see what was going on, then fear not - in Wicked: For Good, you won't mind so much, because there's so little to look at. Here you'll find no gallivanting between the whimsical towers of Shiz University, no rambunctious dance breaks, no Ariana Grande swinging from a chandelier.

The back half of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s musical, adapted from the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire and itself a retelling of The Wizard of Oz that questions the wickedness of the Witch of the West, was always a bit of a slog. And Jon M Chu’s direction, even with all that budget and talent at hand, fails to find a satisfactory fix.

Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the witch in question, has already declared herself a rebel with a cause, via the last film’s climactic “Defying Gravity”. Part two, then, must deal with the drier, more bureaucratic business of getting us from that revelation to her predestined meeting with a bucket of water thrown by a homesick Kansas native.