Frex is a Unionist preacher in Munchkinland who married a
spoiled rich girl who wanted to spite her parents.
Totally mismatched, they nonethless appear to
have produced offspring. Before the
imminent birth of this child, however, Frex sets out into the countryside to
preach the equivalent of fundamentalist fire and brimstone in the land of
Oz. He is especially wary of a device
called Clock of the Time Dragon that appears capable of foretelling the future.
His wife Melena goes into labor and is
delivered of a almost perfectly healthy daughter; healthy except for the fact
she was born with green skin and suffers a fatal allergy to water. Like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s parents, Frex and
Melena are ashamed of their daughter’s striking individuality and keep her away
from others, until the arrival of Melena’s nanny, who
arrives and initiates the
process of socialization for the
young green girl. Shortly thereafter a strange man named Turtle
Heart unofficially becomes part of the family, engaging in an affair with
Melena. Turtle Heart is an expert as
blowing glass and in one of his creations the young green girl, named Elphaba,
sees the arrival of man in a large balloon into the land of Oz.
The next chapter shifts forward to Elphaba’s arrival at
college in Shiz. There she meets a
haughty young woman named Galinda and before long their relationship is
something akin to the kind that Rory and Paris experienced on Gilmore
Girls. Initially they are wary of each
other but eventually, grudgingly, become friends. It is while in college that the driving force
behind Elphaba’s alleged wickedness is realized. She senses in the backward movement toward
treating sentient and intelligent Animals like their un-evolved animal cousins
is part of an overall move toward what we would call a fascist state under the
domain of that man in the balloon, the Wizard. When one of the Animal professors is murdered,
Elphaba casts an accusatory finger at the school’s headmistress Madame
Morrible. Elphaba and Galinda, who has
now dropped the A in her name and calls herself Glinda journey to Emerald City
to express their fears to the Wizard.
Disappointed with the response, Glinda heads back to Shiz, while Elphaba
goes underground in the Emerald City.
A few years later, Elphaba begins a passionate affair with
an old student friend named Fiyero.
Fiyero slowly learns that Elphaba is that strange creature who engages
in acts that make her a freedom fighter to some and a terrorist to others. She has been given the assignment of
murdering Madame Morrible who does indeed work for the Wizard. She is not successful and Fiyero arrives at
her home where he is met by Gale Force storm troopers. He is assumed to be dead.
Elphaba spends time in convent-like place before resolving
to journey to the Vinkus area of Oz, where Fiyero’s wife and children
reside. Fiyero’s wife offers home and
comfort to Elphaba, who takes up residence there accompanied by an odd young
boy named Liir, who may or may not be Elphaba and Fiyero’s son. Nanny eventually arrives, telling Elphaba
that she has been caring for Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose, born without
arms. Their father had made shoes for
Nessarose that Glinda bewitches to allow Nessarose independent movement. Nessarose has become quite powerful in
Munchkinland, moving the region away from the Wizard’s power, but corrupting
herself in the bargain.
Many years later, that famous tornado arrives and dumps a
house on top of Nessarose, whose political obsessions had earned her title
Wicked Witch of the East. Elphaba
arrives in Munchkinland to attend the funeral and becomes aroused when she
learns that the stranger in the house, Dorothy, has taken off with the
bewitched slippers. The Wizard, terrified of threats to his power,
sends Dorothy off to kill the witch, but his real target is the book of magic that
brought him to Oz and which is now in the possession of Elphaba. Fateful events conspire to bring about the
tossing of water onto Elphaba, which kills her.