Musicals extend: Wicked books through Olympics, American Idiot adds week

Wicked has today (23 January 2012) announced that it will perform as normal throughout the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations from Saturday 2 June to Tuesday 5 June 2012 and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The show will cancel only one performance, the evening of Friday 27 July 2012, to avoid clashing with the Olympic opening ceremony. Wicked will add an extra matinee performance on Thursday 26 July 2012.

Wicked currently stars Rachel Tucker as Elphaba, Gina Beck as Glinda, Matt Willis as Fiyero, Desmond Barrit as The Wizard, Julie Legrand as Madame Morrible, Lillie Flynn as Nessarose, Christopher Howell as Doctor Dillamond and Adam Pettigrew as Boq.

Wicked has now played over 2000 performances and celebrates five years in the West End on 27 September 2011. After winning five Whatsonstage.com Awards in its opening year, the show has scooped our prize for long-runners, Best West End Show, for two years running.

The Broadway musical, which opened in London on 27 September 2006 (previews from 6 September), tells the “untold story” of the Witches of Oz – popular blonde Glinda, aka the Good Witch of the North, and her spin-victim friend Elphaba – who were both immortalised in the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz.

The musical has a book by Winnie Holtzman, based on Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. It’s directed by Joe Mantello.

Wicked is produced by Marc Platt, Universal Pictures Stage Productions, The Araca Group, Jon B Platt and David Stone. Its UK executive producer is Michael McCabe.

Production image from American Idiot. Photo credit: Jeremy Daniel.

In other musical extension news American Idiot, the 2010 Broadway musical adaptation of Green Day’s Grammy-winning album, has added an extra week’s run at the HMV Apollo Hammersmith as part of its eight-date UK tour this December.

American Idiot, which played 422 performances at Broadway’s St James Theatre and closed in April 2011, will tour from the Mayflower, Southampton on 9 October 2012 and travel to the Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Edinburgh Playhouse, the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, Dublin’s Grand Canal Theatre, Manchester’s Palace Theatre and Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre prior to coming to London in December.

The musical had been pegged for a week’s London run from 4 to 9 December 2012 with a second week now added through to 16 December 2012. Tickets for the new dates will go on sale at 9.00am Friday 27 January 2012.

A spokesperson for the production had previously told Whatsonstage.com that the Green Day musical has hopes of a West End berth after its December run.

Billed as “the story of three boyhood friends, each searching for meaning in a post 9-11 world,” American Idiot has a book by Green Day’s lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong and the show’s New York director Michael Mayer who also helms the show in the UK.

American Idiot has choreography by Olivier Award-winning choreographer Steven Hoggett (Black Watch), and music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Kitt (Next to Normal). The Tony Award-winning Christine Jones (scenic design) and Kevin Adams (lighting design) will also work with the show.

There is still no confirmation of cast for the show’s UK tour.

American Idiot is produced on tour by SJM Concerts and Flying Entertainment by arrangement with Work Light Productions.