Adam Garcia

In October 2023 the musical Wicked celebrated its 20th anniversary on Broadway. Stephen Schwartz together with Winnie Holzman, inspired by the famous novel by Gregory Maguire, worked hard to create this brilliant adaptation which became the basis for the musical. The creators paid great attention to how the feelings of each character are being expressed through the music and lyrics.

In the initial stage of the creation of a musical the participation and input of the performers who portray the lead characters is crucial. We caught up with Fiyero from the original West End production – Adam Garcia.


You became a part of this show at the early stages of its creation – you participated in the first workshop here in New York. However, since you were busy with another project, you could not become “the very first Fiyero”. Life gave you a second chance and you became the original Fiyero of the West End. How did you turn into Fiyero?
The famous director of Wicked, Joe Mantello, told me: “Listen, I can’t believe you’re turning this down. If this show ever comes to London, you must promise me you’ll do it.” And I promised him. So, I was involved with Wicked quite early on, and, actually, a song that I sang back then was called Which Way Is the Party – it isn’t even in the show anymore. The workshop that I did was when they were reworking things and that song got turned into Dancing Through Life. I think there is one little bit left of that first song that Stephen Schwartz wanted to put in the show – Which Way Is the Party, and it’s the bit “Let’s go down to the Ozdust Ballroom” – that bridge section from Dancing Through Life. So that part used to be in the old song. Stephen wrote a completely new song which we know as Dancing Through Life today.

I remember reading a quote by Stephen Schwartz “One is trying to embody the emotion of a character through the feeling of the music”. How did you play with various vocal styles or the range, what acting tricks did you use to portray the feelings of your character?
The two main songs that Fiyero sings - Dancing Through Life and As Long As You’re Mine – are very different. One is a croony, show-off song, which is great fun, and with the choreography by Wayne Cilento and Joe’s phenomenal directing – it’s fantastic and disruptive. The plot of those songs is pretty simple. As Long As You’re Mine was a song that was a challenge for me vocally. It started so high… During rehearsals, Joe would tell me: “This is a song about making love…,” he wanted it to be very passionate. And, of course, I wasn’t allowed to move, we had to kneel and stay in one spot, and touch each other’s hands – and that was a challenge since that is what normally does not happen during lovemaking. The easiest thing I could always anchor myself on once I was in performance was - I had Idina Menzel and then Kerry Ellis truly singing at me, which was great, they are such committed performers - it’s so easy to literally fall in love with them in that song and be inside that relationship. And you are just there, in a tiny spot on the stage, in their personal 2-meter bubble – for Fiyero and Elphaba - it was a very private song to sing.

When you were working on Fiyero as an actor, what qualities would you say you shared with Fiyero?
I think the qualities that I liked and recognized and that I like and recognize in myself are as follows: Fiyero is not judgmental, he doesn’t have natural biases, he feels different, and that’s a quality that I feel makes him… not freakish – that would be Elphaba, but just a little detached. That’s a good and bad personality trait. There’s a detachment and it’s both sort of a natural protection and the feeling of “Well, life’s great! Let’s cruise through it.” And that resonated with me in Fiyero. The things that I couldn’t connect with – there weren’t that many because even when he gets married and he thinks he is doing the right thing and then realizes that’s a mistake, he gets locked into a cycle of injustice, I guess that would be the best way to put it, with someone that he cares about, with Glinda. That feeling of being trapped inside a machine larger than yourself - I can sort of resonate with that as well. So, I think overall I’m a lot like Fiyero.

Do you enjoy that part, being able to reveal your true self on stage?
I do actually! I find the moment when I get lost in a story, in a character – the great moments in the acting practice in general – where you don’t realize what you’re doing anymore – quite fascinating. I felt that way playing Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever as well. I love it, it is always very cathartic but at the same time, the vulnerability is an uncomfortable feeling. But it’s like trauma relief in a way. We love it as actors. (laughs)