Nearly two hours into the extravagantly overstuffed Wicked: Part I, a remarkable sight unfolds on the streets of the Emerald City. In the midst of the Glinda–Elphaba duet “One Short Day,” a theater troupe presents a little history pageant that tells the story of the Wizard’s arrival in Oz. When two bedazzling actresses, bearing glowing scepters, step onto the troupe’s stage, the movie showers them with the royal treatment, as they truly are royalty.

A Moment of Applause and Fan Service

I have heard from friends that audiences burst into applause upon the appearance of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, the original Broadway cast’s Elphaba and Glinda. In my suburban D.C. theater, filled mainly with young people, their cameo was met with polite interest but no obvious recognition. Director Jon M. Chu truly allows Chenoweth and Menzel to showcase their talents, and their curtain call is, of course, a delight for longtime lovers of the musical. But this short, funny scene holds more significance. It serves as a tonic amidst the grandiosity of Wicked. In just about two minutes, these two Broadway pros deliver the wit, warmth, and old-school theatrical razzmatazz that the movie and its young stars, with all their sparkle and polish, often struggle to achieve.Chu told IndieWire that when he proposed the idea to Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz, Schwartz agreed to write the number overnight. “It gave us, the audience, and the filmmakers, the opportunity to pay homage to them and give them the applause they deserve,” Chu said, and it certainly does that. Each actress gets a significant vocal line and a moment with her successor, symbolically passing the baton and showing that they still possess remarkable range. As IndieWire’s Erin Strecker writes, “Spare a thought for the Broadway fan in your life who might have been in awe when Menzel nodded to her iconic ‘ah-ahh-ah’ ‘Defying Gravity’ riff.”I did not pass out at that moment, partly because, although I am a theater person, I did not particularly love Wicked even when I first saw it. (Some Broadway fans still recall celebrating when Wicked lost the big Tony awards to the funnier and more daring Avenue Q.) However, I still loved this moment in the movie, which felt like a gift to theater people who find themselves missing a certain kind of intimate human performance among the glorious vistas, spinning bookshelves, and zippy hummingbirds of Chu’s movie. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande can certainly belt, and Erivo especially excels at infusing a lyric or a line with powerful emotions like rage, despair, or determination. But what makes Wicked, like most beloved musicals, an entertainment powerhouse is not only the big emotional numbers or the crowds of dancers popping and locking. It is the connection between two performers, in the same space, interacting in recognizable, fun, and human ways.

The Impact of the Cameo

I am not only suggesting that Erivo and Grande are not funny; this is a significant part of the problem. Although neither is a particularly quick-witted comedienne, it is not entirely the actors’ fault. In the dialogue scenes between Elphaba and Glinda in the musical’s first half, which are rich with comic moments and prickly exchanges, Chu mostly avoids two-shots, cutting back and forth between the witches to showcase each star in turn but withholding the reactions and interactions that create an onstage relationship. (This is a surprising choice, given Chu’s evident and highly praised understanding that, for example, theatrical dance numbers work best on film when the audience can see multiple bodies in motion across the screen rather than cutting quickly from one dancer to the next, like many before him.) And once they start singing, Chu’s decision to extend each song slightly does not help. For instance, in “Popular,” Grande finds her punch lines delayed repeatedly, each time just long enough to dampen the humor.Then, into this overbaked, humorless, yet visually gorgeous and beautifully sung behemoth, Menzel and Chenoweth strut their stuff. They are two absolute masters of musical theater, not just in terms of singing but in terms of performance. Their costumes are outlandish, and their hairdos are ridiculous. In every moment, they are captured in two-shots, each playing off their co-star, engaging in goofy prop humor and outdoing each other with evident delight. It is a two-minute master class in showmanship, a skill that Chu possesses in abundance but which his two leading ladies have not quite mastered. In part, it must be said, because Chu’s razzle-dazzle often overshadows theirs.And after each gets a line with their co-star—Chenoweth playfully covering Grande’s mouth so Glinda cannot sing—they leave. There is still, presumably, another three hours or so of Wicked to go (the sequel will be released on Nov. 21, 2025), and although the second half of the musical is a lot grimmer than the first, I hope Chu realizes the ray of sunshine that this cameo duet truly provides and steps back a bit to let his two talented lead actors truly perform.