Ask the Dispatch: What’s the connection between ‘Wicked’ and Hastings?

Somewhere over the rainbow, there’s a magical place called Hastings-on-Hudson with a special connection to the long-running Broadway musical and now feature film “Wicked.”

It’s been a long journey on a winding, yellow brick road for the screen adaptation, first announced in 2012. “Wicked: Part 1” was released in movie theaters last month; “Wicked: Part 2” is scheduled to premiere in November 2025. The show opened on Broadway in 2003 with a book by Winnie Holzman — loosely based on the novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” by Gregory Maguire — and music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.

“Wicked” tells the story of Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Galinda, aka Glinda the Good Witch. The film/musical/book explores Elphaba’s origin story and how she ended up becoming so devilish. The characters in “Wicked” are based on those that originally appeared in L. Frank Baum’s story “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” published in 1900.