(Kristin Chenoweth) and Elphaba - Camera Obscura: Feminism ...

62 • Camera Obscura
7. Susan Hilferty also won for best costume design and Eugene Lee
for best scenic design. That year, Avenue Q won for best musical
in a huge upset. A few (mostly women) critics called Wicked
“completely satisfying” and “thoroughly enchanting” (Elysa
Gardner, “Something ‘Wicked’ Comes to Broadway,” USA Today,
31 October 2003). But most found the musical “lumbering,
overstuffed,” and “murky” (Charles Isherwood, “More Bothered
Than Bewitched by Wicked,” Variety, 3 November 2003, 30).
8. While Wicked needs an enormous number of spectators for such
massive success, its audience is decidedly gendered. A casual
glance at the audience of any given performance confirms that
Wicked’s audiences are predominantly composed of women and
girls, many of whom attend in groups. A study by the League
of American Theatres and Producers found that in the 2005–
2006 season, 62 percent of the Broadway audience was
women, and the average age of a Broadway theatergoer
was 42 (“The Demographics of the Broadway Audience
2005 – 2006,” livebroadway.com/index.php?url_identifier=
the-demographics-of-the-broadway-audience-2005-2006
[accessed 25 April 2007]). A Broadway musical’s success thus
depends significantly on the tastes of women. This is not a new
phenomenon; even before statistics demonstrated a female
majority in the Broadway audience, the image of the 1950s
businessman being forced to see a Broadway musical with his
wife occupied a key place in the cultural imagination.
9. James C. Taylor, “Theater Review: A ‘Wicked’ Remix of Oz,” Los
Angeles Times, 24 June 2005.
10. Jason Zinoman, “A Pair of New Witches, Still in Search of
the Right Spell,” New York Times, 15 July 2005, reproduced at
beyondtherainbow2oz.com/bulletinboard.html.
11. McKinley, “For a Fallen Witch.”
12. Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs,
“Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” in The Adoring
Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New
York: Routledge, 1992), 84 – 106; Gayle Wald, ‘“I Want It That
Way’: Teenybopper Music and the Girling of Boy Bands,” Genders,
no. 35 (2002), genders.org/g35/g35_wald.html; Lisa A. Lewis,
Gender Politics and MTV: Voicing the Difference (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1990). Other useful sources on girl