"There is no place like home" tout the ads for the production of Wicked beginning an open-ended run Jan. 27 at the Orpheum Theatre. Besides quoting from The Wizard of Oz, to which Wicked is a prequel, it also recalls that the musical had its world premiere in SF in 2003 before becoming an enormous Broadway hit and a worldwide phenomenon.

"When we say in the ads that 'there is no place like home,' we really mean that, because we learned in San Francisco we were on track to having an explosive success," said producer David Stone. "But I don't feel the need to stay at the same hotel this time. There was a lot of tumult in those rooms. It was not fun."

While almost any big Broadway musical has its fair share of birthing pains, Wicked seems to have gone through a particularly fraught development during its run at the Curran Theatre, and then in New York before opening on Broadway. "What made it worse was realizing what we had, and then trying not to screw it up," said Stone, who found himself cast as the peacemaker between songwriter Stephen Schwartz, director Joe Mantello, librettist Winnie Holzman, and fellow producer Marc Platt.

"There was one day when Stephen was upset about something, and he was poking Marc, and literally pushed Marc into Geary Street, like, into the traffic," Stone said. "Then there was a particularly bad moment before we started rehearsals in New York, and I went to the men's room, and when I came back there was a note on my desk saying, 'Dear David, I can't do this anymore. I quit. You can use my score but please take my name off the show, and from now on, only speak to me through my attorney.' By the time I had finished reading it, Stephen had come back and said, 'OK, maybe that was a little hasty.' I ended up framing the letter and hanging it on my wall."

Wicked represented Schwartz's return to Broadway after a long hiatus (and starting a new Oscar-winning career penning songs to animated features), and he was still h

Producer David Stone with Wicked 's original Elphaba, Idina Menzel. Photo: Bruce Glikas/broadway.com

urting from his experiences on such flops as Rags, Working, and The Baker's Wife, and even on the hit Pippin, where he and director Bob Fosse famously bumped heads.

"He expects all collaborations to be like that," Stone said, "and Joe basically said, 'Hey, I have to be proven guilty before you start in on me.' I've been friends with Stephen for many years, so I was able to say to him, 'You can't talk to people like that. Now go and apologize.' I would laugh at him when he would start to go particularly crazy, and then he would back right up. He knows his behavior."

Wicked was Schwartz's baby from the beginning, starting in 1996 when he first came across Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Hooking up with movie producer Marc Platt, they lobbied Universal Pictures, which owned the rights to the novel, to forego its idea to make a movie, and rather back his notion to turn it into a Broadway musical. "It was the best decision Universal ever made," Stone said of the studio, which invested a large portion of the musical's $14 million cost.

Wicked is now in its sixth year on Broadway, and there is seldom an empty seat in the huge Gershwin Theatre. There are seven other productions across the globe, and of course there is talk of a Wicked movie. "But it's years away," Stone said, "because we don't even know where the peak is yet for the stage show."

The collaborators – all wounds seemingly healed by success – have often pondered what separates Wicked from other successful musicals. "For one thing, it operates on so many different levels at the same time, so different audiences, teens, gays, adults, can appreciate different parts of it. When you look at other hit musicals, they basically operate on the same level. Phantom is Phantom. Everyone sees the same thing in it."

Stone also thinks the musical resonates with the times, when evil needed to be codified to justify such decisions as going to war and imposing such deceptively named laws as the Patriot Act. "I think we understood that for the first time in San Francisco, at the first preview, that if the person who we are most afraid of our whole lives, like the Wicked Witch of the West, is not the person we thought, then nobody is."

The show has a large gay following, and Stone thinks it starts with its obvious connection to The Wizard of Oz. It's also the rare musical with two female leads, and the story shows how they fight the definitions imposed upon them by a patriarchal society. "Eve Ensler of The Vagina Monologues, which I produced, came to San Francisco to see Wicked, and she called it the first feminist musical ever written," said Stone.

Stone, 42, is himself gay, and  was recently asked if the choice of material that he works on has anything to do with his sexual orientation. "And the answer is, 'sometimes.' It was with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which is about outsiders, and the same thing, even more so, with Wicked.

"But the one thing I did most because of my orientation is The Vagina Monologues, which may sound strange, since it's been so long since I've seen one. But to me it was about not having shame and being comfortable with your body, and Eve said only a gay man could have promoted the show like I did."

But sometimes his gaydar skips a beat. "On opening night in New York, someone told me that Liza Minnelli was coming, and I said that's nice. I told some others, and they were, like, that's amazing. It took me a while to think, oh, her mother was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I can be such a bad homosexual."

Wicked begins performances Jan. 27 at the Orpheum Theatre, and tickets ($25-$99) are currently on sale through June 27. Call 512-7770 or go to www.shnsf.com.