Elphaba Thropp is the name given to the Wicked Witch of the West in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, as well as in the Broadway adaptation, Wicked. In the original L. Frank Baum book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the witch is unnamed and we know little about her life. Elphaba is modeled after the witch as she is shown in the 1939 classic movie The Wizard of Oz: Green-skinned, clad entirely in black, and wearing a tall peaked hat. Maguire formulated the name out of L. Frank Baum's name. L. Frank Baum became El-pha-ba. In both adaptations, Elphaba is also called by several nicknames including Elphie, Fabala, and Fae.
Template:Spoiler Elphaba was born with green skin to parents Frex (in the book, a minister; in the musical, the governor of Munchkinland) and Melena. In the book, she has a disabled younger sister, Nessarose, who grows up to become the Wicked Witch of the East, and a younger brother, Shell. While the musical features Nessarose as a prominent character, it makes no reference to Shell. Because of her condition, Elphaba is shunned by her father, who instead gives all of his love and attention to Nessarose. It is revealed Elphaba's father Frex blames her for Nessarose's condition. He reminds Elphaba that, because he was so dismayed over her green-tone, he forced Melena to take milkweed, resulting in Nessarose's condition (in the novel, Nessa has no arms; in the musical, she has arms, but is wheelchair-bound.) Regardless, Elphaba is very close to and protective of her sister. In the novel, Elphaba is eventually accompanied by a boy named Liir who is believed to be her son. (Liir is the protagonist of Son of a Witch, Maguire's sequel to Wicked.) The assumed father of Liir is Fiyero, who earlier had an affair with Elphaba.
In both the book and musical, Elphaba is a misunderstood and unfairly loathed young woman who becomes a revolutionary and falls in love with the Winkie prince Fiyero. She also forms an unlikely friendship with Galinda, the girl who would eventually be known as Glinda the Good. While the exact incidents of her life as presented in the two works are quite different from each other, they both show that Elphaba is not, in fact, as "wicked" as she has always been portrayed. In the musical, Elphaba does not really die, but rather is assisted by Dorothy in a faked death. In the book, Elphaba does die from Dorothy's water, but the death is accidental. It is later revealed in both works that Elphaba was the illegitimate daughter of The Wizard of Oz. It is also revealed that it might have been the Wizard's seduction of Melena with a magical green elixir that caused Elphaba to be "greenified." Elphaba herself carried a bottle of the elixir always with her, a fact that Galinda later remembers when confronting the Wizard with the truth of Elphaba's condition.
In the Broadway musical, the character of Elphaba was first played by Idina Menzel (shown above), who won the Tony award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for the role. After she left the show, her replacements included Shoshana Bean and Eden Espinosa. On the musical's first national tour, Elphaba was first played by Stephanie J. Block, who had worked as the stand-in Elphaba during the musical's production. In the permanent Chicago run of the show, she was played by Ana Gasteyer (of Saturday Night Live fame) and Kristy Cates.