Gina Beck and Matt Willis are to join the London company of Wicked as Glinda and Fiyero, respectively, and Desmond Barrit is to return as the Wizard, beginning performances Dec. 12.

Gina Beck and Matt Willis to Join Wicked

The pair are joined in the cast by Lillie Flynn as Nessarose, Christopher Howell as Doctor Dillamond and Adam Pettigrew as Boq. Desmond Barrit, who first starred in Wicked in 2008, returns to the role of The Wizard.

Rachel Tucker, who won this year’s Whatsonstage.com Award for Best Take Over in a Role will, as previously reported, remain in the role of Elphaba. Julie Legrand also stays on as Madame Morrible.

Beck, who is currently appearing on the London stage in The Belle’s Stratagem at Southwark Playhouse, recently finished a two-year run starring as Christine Daaé in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre. She made her debut in 2006 as Cosette in Les Miserables and performed in the show’s 25th anniversary celebrations at The O2 last year.

Matt Willis came to prominence as a member of the BRIT Award-winning band Busted and has subsequently appeared on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. Trained at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, he made his West End debut in Flashdance and has recently appeared in the UK tour of Footloose.

Barrit previously starred in Wicked in 2008/9. He recently played Falstaff in Henry IV Parts One and Two for peter Hall at the Bath Theatre Royal.

Wicked has now played over 2000 performances and celebrates five years in the West End on 27 September 2011. 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 production is now booking through 27 October 2012 at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, Wilton Road, London, SW1V 1LG. Buy Wicked London, United Kingdom Tickets Online. Use Code AFF$10 to Get $10 OFF on Wicked Apollo Victoria Theatre Ticket Orders over $350!

BroadwayWorld just announced that Wicked’s production at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre just enjoyed its highest grossing year to date – grossing £27,333,991 at the Box Office up 100,000 from last year (2008). The musical, which was named “Best Musical of the Decade” by Entertainment Weekly has grossed over £90 million at the UK Box Office since premiering in London in September 2006. The production celebrated 1,000 performance in February last year and 2 million customers in May 2009.

The women of Wicked in the UK – Dianne Pilkington and Alexia Khadime – were honored as Women of the Future at the annual Woman of the Future Awards. The production has been ’short-listed’ as Best West End Show by theatergoers voting online through the end of the month, at Whatsonstage.com (http://awards.whatsonstage.com). ”The public’s incredible enthusiasm and support for Wicked has swept us along on a huge wave of success since we opened in 2006. To see our business continuing to climb year-on-year is really incredible and we are enormously grateful to the millions of people who have bought tickets to date and especially to those who made 2009 our best year yet,” UK Executive Producer Michael McCabe said.

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