Wicked - 2023/2025 UK and Ireland Tour

I hope Nikki Bentley returns. She knows what it's like to tour this show and seems to be doing much better now. I think maybe Laura Harrison as standby?

I am a big fan of Nikki but there is a HUGE difference from being a standby and being on now and again to going on eight times a week. She had to drop out from London and has not been on stage regularly since then.
It would be a huge ask of her to do this.

You know who I’d love to see play Elphaba, Samantha Barks. If she ever moves on from Frozen. She’d be phenomenal.

Ah yes would love this but can’t see her doing a UK tour. Staying with the Disney theme Courtney Stapleton comes to mind as a future Elphaba for me as well.

I agree Samantha would be a brilliant Elphaba and looking at her stellar attendance record at Frozen, I’m sure she’d handle the role 8 times a week just fine. I feel like it’s not the sort of thing that would be on her radar right now though (she’s done the Les Mis movie, originated a role on Broadway, originated one in London in a huge musical, I feel like she can do “bigger” things than just being the latest Elphaba). Maybe she could do it for the 20th anniversary or something to make it feel more of an event.
I think Courtney Stapleton was fantastic in Beauty and the Beast but I’m not sure if I see her as an Elphaba, I thought her understudy Grace Swaby-Moore had more of an “Elphaba voice”.

Courtney Stapleton is a wonderful idea. I would love that!!

I know the above is a joke; the days of Ellis being in Wicked are well in the past now.

As much I like Ellis (and she made the singing seem effortless years ago when I saw her as Elphaba), I doubt she could sing the role as written now. Her voice still has range, but it has declined somewhat and the timbre has become much more nasal, I think.

I loved her in Anything Goes, but this singing was much less ‘full throttle’ than the demands of Wicked. In her younger days, her power was phenomenal.

I can't imagine Kerry would want to do it. She has school aged boys.

I think we will see someone new.

Seeing as both were playing high schoolers not long ago, I don’t think they’d be too old to play Elphaba for a while yet.

I loved Christina later on in that Heathers run. She's still one of my favourite Veronica's and I feel like she could be a decent Elpheba.

Ailsa's heathers performance I've only seen from the proshot and I was very disappointed. Apparently it was very different from her usual on-stage performance so willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t think her attendance had anything to do with a second contract to be honest.

I think from the start of her contract they had the idea that lucie and Helen would only do a year as they wanted to bring Alexia back and get the first black Glinda for next year which they’ve done. Diversity etc