For the week ending Oct. 28, the hit Stephen Schwartz-Winnie Holzman musical grossed £761,125. That figure is higher than any other production currently running in London and is the highest weekly gross for an eight-performance-a-week show in West End history.
The Apollo Victoria Theatre seats 2,304, and Wicked is averaging just over 95 perecent capacity each week. For the month of October, the musical grossed nearly £2.5 million.
Wicked also plays on Broadway (at the Gershwin Theatre), in Chicago (Ford Center for the Performing Arts' Oriental Theatre), on tour in the U.S. and will soon open at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles.
The London cast features Idina Menzel as Elphaba, Helen Dallimore as Glinda, Adam Garcia as Fiyero, Miriam Margolyes as Madame Morrible, Nigel Planer as The Wizard, Katie Rowley Jones as Nessarose, James Gillan as Boq and Martin Ball as Doctor Dillamond.
Wicked features a score by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. The creative team also includes scenic design by Eugene Lee, costume design by Susan Hilferty, lighting design by Kenneth Posner, sound design by Tony Meola, projections by Elaine J. McCarthy, wig and hair design by Tom Watson, music supervision and arrangements by Stephen Oremus, orchestrations by William David Brohn, dance arrangements by James Lynn Abbott, musical staging by Wayne Cilento and musical supervision-direction by Gareth Valentine. Based on Gregory Maguire's novel, which turned every Oz myth inside out, Wicked explores the early life of the witches of Oz: Glinda and Elphaba. The two main characters meet at Shiz, a school where both hope to take up sorcery. Glinda is madly popular and Elphaba is, well, green. By a misunderstanding, they wind up roommates and, after an initial period of mutual loathing, begin to learn something about each other. Their life paths continue to intersect through a shared love, entry into the Emerald City and interaction with the Wizard himself. Eventually, their choices and convictions take them on widely different paths.
For more information about the London production of Wicked, call (0)870 594 9494.
