Theatre News

Ugly Betty‘s America Ferrera Leads Chicago at Garrick

| London's West End |

10 October 2011

Ugly Betty star America Ferrera will make her British stage debut when Chicago reopens at the Garrick Theatre on 7 November 2011.

The Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award-winner will “swap her trademark braces for fishnets” to play Roxie Hart alongside Amra-Faye Wright, currently starring in the Broadway production, as Velma Kelly.

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.

The Garrick Theatre production will run alongside a national tour of the
show in 2012. The show has announced dates for Bradford, Hull,
Manchester, Sunderland and Edinburgh between February and April next
year. Casting for that production has also still to be announced.