Under the moral’s spell

AT age 12, Margret Wiggins is a seasoned Broadway theater-goer. Along with her family in New York, she’s seen more than a dozen musicals that she can rattle off the top of her head.

“I liked ‘Hairspray,’ ‘Footloose,’ and ‘Wicked’ the best,” says Margret, who went to see “Wicked” with her mother, a girlfriend and her friend’s mom. “ ‘Wicked’ was so cool. I liked Elphaba the best. At the beginning, I felt bad for her because even her father didn’t like her, because of her green skin, but then she found special powers. If I had a special power, I’d like to save animals.”

Musicals attracting large mother-daughter audiences have long been a staple on Broadway but have been on the rise in the last decade. Interestingly, the most popular shows have themes that explore some aspect of prejudice -- not exactly light, youth-oriented fare.

“Wicked,” winner of three Tony Awards, for example, is the untold story of the witches of Oz. At its heart is the friendship between two very different girls -- Glinda, the pretty, blond, not-so-smart one, and Elphaba, the talented, but ... ghastly looking, green one.

“The character we’ve always thought of as the Wicked Witch of the West is a green girl who’s actually very good, misunderstood, and trying to make her way in the world,” says Marc Platt, a producer of the show, which opens at the Pantages Theatre on Wednesday. “She’s an outsider looking in, wanting to be loved. That’s a universal experience that everyone’s felt at some point in their lives. It’s also a metaphor for diversity.

“Musicals have long given voice to outsiders and speak of experiences in our culture and environment.”

The message that what’s inside of us matters more than how we look on the outside is clearly at the center of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aida” and other hit shows, including “Hairspray” and the classic “The Sound of Music.”

“My daughters definitely got the message,” says Chris Fleming, the mother of Margret as well as Lily, 16, and Alison Wiggins, 18. “In their schools, they talk about these kinds of issues, so right away, the girls empathized with the green one and rooted for her. Glinda’s so endearing and funny, you also support her. It’s a musical that’s happy and fun, with deeper meaning.”

Alison and Lily have seen “Wicked” several times, and even performed a duet of the song “What Is This Feeling?” for their high school musical revue.

“I’ve seen it three times and am taking my dad to see it next,” says Alison, who plans to study theater and voice in college. “The story is easy to connect with. The idea that the green witch is ugly and seen as different is something that everyone’s felt before.”

An audience in sight

CREATING characters that people identify with is the key to good storytelling, and Broadway producers say tales that seem to particularly appeal to mother-daughter audiences usually include romance, misunderstood heroines, outcasts who triumph over adversity, and a happy ending.

Issues of diversity, prejudice and overcoming differences between people are routinely explored in Disney musicals, says Thomas Schumacher, president of Buena Vista Theatrical Group, whose stage productions include “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aida.”

“ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ deals with the redemptive power of love and the idea that you have to look beneath the surface of people,” he says. “A teapot’s not just a teapot.

“ ‘Aida’ is about the power of love transcending two cultures in conflict. Does Aida remain true to her father and her fatherland or to the man she falls in love with? These are very good themes for musicals.”

Schumacher notes that prejudice has touched the lives of many baby boomers who grew up in the 1960s with busing and school desegregation, and musicals that somehow touch upon the issues of bias resonate with parents who take their children to the theater. He cites “Wicked” as one example.

“Elphaba is green, so that’s the obvious thing. But the audience also has preconceptions that she’s bad,” says Schumacher. “The layers of the audience learning to understand who Elphaba and Glinda are is brilliant. The ‘Wizard of Oz’ is in everyone’s DNA in America. The most powerful thing in ‘Wicked’ is coming to understand that everything you were taught is not true, and then coming to terms with that.”

Schumacher, formerly president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, oversaw 21 animated films at the studio, including “Pocahontas,” “Mulan” and others.

Currently, he’s overseeing the development of the Broadway-bound stage production of “Tarzan” and “The Little Mermaid” and is producing the stage adaptation of “Mary Poppins,” now playing in London.

“Am I doing these shows to appeal to women?” says Schumacher. “No. The shows that succeed appeal to the most people. But if you asked 500 boys between the age of 11 and 23 how many want to see a Broadway show, they’re clearly not our dominant audience.”

Indeed, when it comes to buying theater tickets, women control the purse strings. During the 2003-04 season, 63% of the Broadway audience was female, according to a study by the League of American Theatres and Producers. Women made up 72% of the audiences for touring Broadway shows.

The rise in mother-daughter audiences began about a decade ago, after Disney moved onto 42nd Street and Times Square became more family-friendly for theater-goers, says Nancy Coyne, CEO of the marketing firm Serino Coyne Inc.

“The content on stage, and the area around the theaters all became more hospitable,” says Coyne, who created the advertising campaign for the 1998 Broadway revival of “The Sound of Music.”

In a 30-second TV commercial based on Coyne’s own life, viewers saw a little girl and her mother arriving at a vintage theater under a light snowfall. The narrator talks about experiencing her first Broadway show. Then it cuts to the present, where the little girl is now a mother, tucking her daughter into bed on the eve of attending their first Broadway show together.

“My first assignment is to reach the people who love to go to theater,” says Coyne, who also designed the advertising for “Wicked.” “My second audience is teenage girls. We use teen publications, radio stations that have high percentages of teen-girl listeners, television and the Internet. ‘Wicked’ is a phenomenon because of teenage girls.

“At every matinee, you’ll hear a girl saying, ‘See? I told you you’d love it.’ They’re e-mailing their friends, and it’s a powerful tool for sales. Theater is a collective experience. When we all imagine something collectively, it makes you feel a part of something, and that common experience makes it easier to talk about difficult subjects like prejudice.”

Bert Fink of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization says many of its musicals dealt with themes of personal values, liberty and prejudice in an era when such topics were not routinely discussed.

“ ‘The King and I’ is East meets West in the old parliament,” he says. “It’s not about one culture triumphing over another. It’s about both learning about each other. In ‘South Pacific,’ Nellie is a vivacious, outgoing nurse who’s exposed to new cultures and learns to look at people and race in a different way. Songs like ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’ help us to become part of the story and see the bigger picture.”

Of music and a message

Musical theater, says educators, can be an entertaining and enlightening vehicle for exploring issues in society, particularly for youngsters.

“I think you can appreciate a musical by the age of 4 or 5,” says professor Gary Gardner, who teaches playwriting and American theater history at UCLA. “I think children understand the messages in musicals better than the adults in the audience. Any musical with a strong female character is a draw, and can be a role model, for girls in the audience.”

He cites shows such as “Wicked,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Women.” Classics such as “The King and I,” “South Pacific” and “Annie,” he notes, are also shows with themes about some form of bias that appeal to mother-daughter audiences.

“ ‘Annie’s’ become the definitive musical to take children to see when they’re ready to go to the theater,” says Martin Charnin, lyricist and conceiver of the show, based on the “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip by Harold Gray. “It’s a fairy tale where her benefactor is the richest person, and she’s the poorest orphan. It’s about polarization and bringing people together.

“Prejudice is not an easy subject to explore, whether it’s about race, gender, age or sexual orientation. Children are more prone to get messages from musicals than plays and books. They get a lot out of music, and when you add words, they absorb them.”

Gina Rose Weiss, now 11, celebrated her 10th birthday with a party and seeing “Wicked” with several friends in New York.

“It was really cool because afterward, we were, like, quoting it for three hours,” says Gina, a professional actress who has appeared in television commercials and on “Law & Order.” “I like Elphaba a lot because her character really grows. She and Glinda learn about the good in each other.”

She says it’s easy to relate to the witches in the show because in real life, girls who are deemed outsiders and girls who are seen as the popular ones often behave similarly.

“Sometimes, the Elphabas in real life get really mean because the Glindas are really mean to them,” Gina says. “When Glindas get caught up in their Glinda-ness, they get really insane.”

Marcia Weiss, Gina’s mother, says the two have talked about the themes in “Wicked,” several of which are particularly relevant to young girls.

“At the age Gina is now, it’s all about which kid is popular,” says Weiss, an independent film producer. “The show brings her back to the truth that being popular has nothing to do with merit or intelligence. People try to label things ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘wicked,’ but life is never cut and dried. In the show, you see people learning about each other, and they’re changed because of it.”

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‘Wicked’

Where: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. After July 19: 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays, 1 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 31.

Price and contact: $35-$89; (213) 365-3500