NPH Has Been Changed For Good: A Review of T-Squared Social’s Wicked Double Bill

Very few people would venture to spend four hours and 58 minutes (not including the 13 minutes allotted for a singular break) seated in the back row of a sold-out cinema to watch Wicked and Wicked: For Good back to back. But being the reporters that we are — one of us a self-proclaimed Oz-media anthropologist, and the other a former theatre kid and pop culture vulture — we felt it was our responsibility to go to that unfamiliar place somewhere over the Rainbow (or, rather, somewhere over on North Street) and into the gaping maw of the town’s latest capitalistic venture: T-Squared Social. 

Upon our first steps into T-Squared, it felt like we had crossed the threshold into the garish technicolour refurbishment of what had once been so familiar. The space had become liminal, the kind of nonsensical space you stumble into in a dream, in which you happen to see a movie while also adjacent to a group of rowdy, beer-drinking ‘dude-bros’ throwing darts. Nothing about it makes sense — especially not its attempt at being the cinema of yesteryear. If T-Squared’s two cinemas were intended as a peace offering to the embittered residents of St Andrews, in practice, they feel more like a head on a spike. It’s one thing to gut an institution of art and culture — it’s another thing entirely to do it this badly. 

For one, T-Squared merchandise lines the shiny, sterile front walkway, signalling to any and all of the venue’s visitors that it’s truly nothing more than a cash-grab. I will say, the display paired nicely with the silver light fixture (which may have been aiming for ArtDeco?) hanging from the ceiling. We were, however, pleasantly surprised to find that a singular aspect of our old friend the New Picture House had survived, stubbornly unimpacted even with all of the renovations done: that distinct movie theatre smell. Everyone knows that smell — sweet and savoury, like boxed chocolate candy tossed right into a bucket of buttered popcorn. Other than that, it’s safe to say that, yes, our former cinema has been changed for good. 

The interior of T-Squared is like a navy-coloured, Wayfair-furnished boat. If you never got the chance to go to the NPH, you can glean the gist from T-Squared — not much has changed. One small cinema remains in its entirety, while the main cinema has been divided into a mezzanine seating area and the distinct impression of a sort of restaurant on the ground floor. Everything feels temporary, or at least a little brittle. It didn’t do any favours by the staffing issues we experienced during our time there. Once we had shown our tickets, we were led into the wrong cinema before finally walking back to the smaller one, all while the staff member leading us around whispered under their breath: “I told them not to call both ‘cinema,’ but they didn’t listen.” 

During the intermission, we began our own ‘Defying Gravity’ sequence and investigated the space. Perhaps it was due to the fact that we had just spent the past two hours and seventeen minutes in Oz, but manoeuvring through the building’s labyrinthian layout did, at times, feel like navigating that of the Emerald City itself. We climbed to the upper level of what used to be NPH’s largest cinema, staring down at what it had become: a glorified man cave. For all of the different sporting events being projected at once, very few people seemed to be actually paying attention to them. Instead, they played golf simulator, ate, and talked over the overwhelming stimulation ricocheting off the walls. We looked at one another in horror. (Wicked: For Good spoiler ahead) The transformation was like that of Boq turning into the Tin Man: What was once familiar and kind had been irrevocably replaced by something shiny, synthetic, and heartless.

Speaking of For Good, it managed its task about as well as Timberlake and Woods managed theirs. For a movie so explicit about its goal of improving Wicked’s second act, it only seemed to shine during the rare moments it emulated the musical. Even then, some scenes just failed to translate. Wicked (the musical) has always been tawdry, but fun. Act Two’s redeeming elements, however, could not pull the weight of Wicked: For Good — it’s overstuffed, overdone, and built upon misguided notions about what needed to be improved. To the trained and loving ear, every new motif or melody either felt out of place or seemed to be written remarkably poorly. 

At the movie’s close, we got up from our seats, discarded our trash, and sluggishly trudged out of the cinema (if you can even call it that), unsure what to think about any of it — what we just watched, where we just watched whatever it was we watched, and what quirky one-liners we could muster for Letterboxd. We ultimately found that Wicked: For Good and T-Squared were paired well: Ill-advised ventures to innovate source material, which worked fine, though perhaps not optimally. Neither can rightly be called disasters, but both are haunted by their predecessors. Everywhere you turn in T-Squared, the ghost of NPH screams from underneath the fresh navy-blue walls and faux marble countertops. The cinema may have changed for good, but whether it been changed for the better? That you’ll have to decide for yourselves. 

Illustration by Mia Fish