Lee Mead Plays Legally Blonde Emmett from JunDate: 17 March 2011
Lee Mead will join the cast of the Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Award-winning musical Legally Blonde taking over as Emmett Forrest from Alex Gaumond in mid-June. Gaumond, who has played the role since the show's West End premiere in January 2010, extends his engagement until 18 June 2011.
Mead, who came to prominence winning the BBC's reality casting show, Any Dream Will Do, and took the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Adelphi Theatre from 2007 to early 2009, played Fiyero in Wicked until early last month.
His previous theatre credits include Lord Arthur Savile in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime on national tour, The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre and the UK tours of both Miss Saigon and Tommy.
Mead joins the West End cast of Susan McFadden as Elle Woods, Carley Stenson as Margot, Nicola Brazil as Serena, Siobhan Dillon as Vivienne and Peter Davison as Professor Callahan. Denise Van Outen, who Mead married in April 2009 currently stars as beautician Paulette, however it is not expected they will appear in the show at the same time.
Legally Blonde The Musical picked up four gongs at the 2011 Whatsonstage.com Awards, including Best New Musical. Nominated for five Olivier Awards it went on to win Best New Musical, the Best Actress in a Musical prize for Sheridan Smith and Best Supporting Role in a Musical for co-star Jill Halfpenny.
Based on the 2001 Hollywood film in which Reese Witherspoon played California sorority girl Elle Woods, the show is directed by Tony Award-winning and Olivier Award-nominated choreographer Jerry Mitchell. Having opened on Broadway in 2007 the musical comedy opened at the Savoy Theatre on 13 January 2010 (previews from 5 December 2009) where it is currently booking until 31 March 2012.
It was announced earlier this week that the show will embark on a UK tour from Liverpool Empire where it will run from 8 to 16 July 2011. Further casting and full tour dates are still to be announced.
Legally Blonde has music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin, book by Heather Hach, set design by David Rockwell, costume design by Gregg Barnes, lighting design by Kenneth Posner and Paul Miller, sound design by ACME Sound Partners and orchestrations by Christopher Jahnke.
It's produced in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions, Robert G Bartner, Ambassador Theatre Group, Bud Martin, Adam Zotovich, Jamie Hendry Productions, Matthew Byam Shaw and Act Productions.
- by Andrew Girvan
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