Wicked - New UK and Ireland Tour (2018)

ITS CONFIRMED. Amy Ross as Elphaba and Helen Woolf as Glinda!

I just saw it on Twitter.

Amy Goodwin is covering both Glinda and Elphaba.

To go from Nicola, arguably the most thankless role in Kinky Boots, to Elphaba in Wicked is certainly gravity defying career progression for Amy Ross. Looking forward to seeing this cast in Liverpool!

THIRD cover Glinda? Don't tell me Wicked are learning from their mistakes and employing an adequate number of covers for each role!?

I assumed it meant 3rd Elphaba to go on as in Lead, Standby and then 1st u/s?!?!

Ohhh maybe, but 2nd Elphaba would be standby.

Maybe she auditioned for the Green side of things and got the understudy gig, but then the producers figured that if she understudied Glinda on the last tour they may as well keep her as a backup, hence being an "extra" understudy?

Thanks for this! Saves me spending my whole half hour break trailing through twitter trying to figure out who's covering what. 
Mind figuring out the understudies seems to be far more exciting than the cast announcement as a whole 

It's started... 😂

What a great launch event – this should be done for every cast change and tour launch! Apologies this is slightly lengthy…..

I arrived and there were at least 100 people already there, everyone was given the 10th anniversary souvenir programme. Michael McCabe kicked the event off by referencing the Wizard of Oz book from 1900 and how it had inspired a generation of stories. Michael told how Gregory McGuire lived in London and would frequently sit in the evenings near London Zoo and hear the animals, it was this that inspired him to wonder about the path that the Wicked Witch had taken, linked with what would happen if animals could talk – and that led to the themes of the Wicked stories.

Michael McCabe referenced the two years of planning to get the original tour up and running, that if the production standards of Broadway and London couldn’t be honoured then they weren’t going to take it on tour. He also mentioned the extraordinary supporters who come back to the show time and time again (I thought this was a lovely touch!)!

The London production is shortly to become the 15th longest running show in West End history.

Michael referenced the notion of “celebrity” today. That people can be famous just for being on the TV, and a lack of strong female role models for young people to look up to. He talked about the Wicked For Good programme to tackle bullying and their school education programme. Amongst strong role models he called out Elphaba as someone who people make a connection to and feel inspired by.

Amy Ross and Aaron Sidwell then came on stage and sang As Long As You’re Mine – I really liked it, their voices blend well together!

Hannah Williams is a senior costume supervisor in London and came on stage to talk through some of the designs – this was brilliant for a geek! There are 20,000 items in a warehouse in the Midlands just for London and the UK tour. It takes three months from the initial measurement session to the cast being able to wear the costume and each outfit has three different fitting sessions. The quickest change in the show is Glinda who has 49 seconds to get out of the bubble dress and is supported by 3 dressers!! Another quick change is the 8 ensemble who have 3 ½ minutes to get into their monkey costumes which contains 8 different bits to put on!

In total there have been 35 bubble dresses made for the UK productions (London and tours) and they’re all made by the same seamstress in the UK – the bubble dress is washable! In the ensemble, no person has two gloves the same, the left and right hand are always different! There you go fact fans!

Amy and Helen then sang For Good! After that we were taken outside to see Elphaba “Defy Gravity!” There was no singing but we were treated to a fully greened up Natasha Ferguson in her Act 2 outfit hoisted above the harbour in Bristol! Natasha then posed for photos and I got my first #elphieselfie

After the event I chatted to Michael McCabe who confirmed it’s this cast doing Zurich rather than the last International cast (as we suspected when the International tour got cut short!). I told him this type of an event is what fans want to see and he smiled and said he knows – whether anything will be done in the future who knows. He was really lovely to chat to, we talked about the fans and he joked that he doesn’t know how people afford to see it so many times in the same week!

I left after Amy and Helen signed my programme – rehearsals start in two weeks and some of the ensemble are having their costume fittings today. If you want to see some of the photos I’m on twitter @welsh_tenor. The leads were doing radio and press interviews as I left, lots of people walking around with headsets on looking important!

A great day out!

Benjamin Yates, I'm there!

Maybe it was just the bad stream..or sound...or set up...or lack of rehearsal....but i caught a bit of ALAYM and it sounded really quite bad. Like painful. I actually had to switch the stream off.

I did not expect this.