Theatre News

Darius Returns to West End to Join Ferrera in Chicago

| London's West End |

27 October 2011

Darius Campbell (formerly Danesh) will return to the West End for the first time since Gone With the Wind to star alongside America Ferrera in Chicago, which reopens at the Garrick Theatre on 7 November.

Campbell will play Billy Flynn, a role he played in the West End in 2006, opposite Ferrera’s Roxie Hart, alongside Amra-Faye Wright as Velma Kelly, James Doherty as Amos Hart, Jasna Ivir as Mama Morton and R Whitehead as Mary Sunshine.

Chicago, which played 603 performances from April
1979 at the Cambridge Theatre, was revived at the Adelphi Theatre on 18
November 1997 moving to the Cambridge on 28 April 2006 where it ran for
over five years, closing on 27 August 2011 to make way for the Royal
Shakespeare Company’s transfer of Roald Dahl page-to-stage musical Matilda.

Chicago won the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding
Musical Production as well as the 1998 Critics’ Circle Award for Best
Musical.

Kander and Ebb’s 1975 musical is based on the play by Maurine Dallas
Watkins and has a book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander
and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The current production, which transferred from
Broadway, is directed by Walter Bobbie and designed by John Lee
Beatty, with choreography by Ann Reinking in the style of Bob Fosse.

Darius Campbell, who rose to fame on Pop Idol in 2001, was last seen in the West End in 2008 playing Rhett Butler in Trevor Nunn‘s ill-fated musical production of Gone With the Wind. His other West End credits include playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, while on television, he appeared in BBC1’s Hotel Babylon and last year won ITV1′s Popstar to Operastar.