Big London musical WICKED at the Apollo Victoria is one of the most spectacular musicals now playing in the West End. Flying into London direct from Broadway, the show has continued to delight millions of people with its origins story of the “The Wizard of Oz” and how the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch came to be.
Read reviews of WICKED from across its long run, from 2021 back to the original opening night in 2006.
Based on the acclaimed, best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire, WICKED is based on L. Frank Baum’s beloved characters from ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’. WICKED has music and lyrics by multi Grammy and Academy Award-winner Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, The Prince of Egypt) and adapted for the stage by Winnie Holzman (My So-Called Life). Musical staging is by Tony Award-winner Wayne Cilento and the production is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Joe Mantello.
Book tickets to WICKED at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London
Wicked reviews
"The musical witches of this 'Wizard of Oz' prequel are still casting a spell over the West End"
"After its 2006 opening at Apollo Victoria, Oz prequel 'Wicked' continues to fill this massive theatre with an international crowd"
"This stylish and bombastic musical still delivers, sailing over its patchy score thanks to a gravity-defying performance "
"Defying Gravity after TWELVE years, this show continues to soar"
"The enormous Apollo Victoria Theatre is still packing them in to see Wicked twelve long years after Idina Menzel flew in with the show direct from Broadway."
"I was lucky enough to see it then and I'm very happy to report it has lost none of its magic and the latest cast brings an enchanting freshness and smart edge to this classic twisted tale of good and wicked."
"A once sexy, sassy and sensational production is now showing signs of aging"
"It’s been all of 15 years since I first reviewed Wicked and gave it five stars and called it – to the delight of the show’s publicists – sexy, sassy and sensational."
"The secret of Joe Mantello’s production is it gets what musical theatre is about: it needs to look right, sound right and make all the right moves, and this is the triple whammy that, broadly speaking, it achieves."
"The biggest new musical London has seen in years"
"Size isn't everything - but it helps. Wicked duly arrives in the West End from Broadway on a wave of audience if not unanimous critical approval, where it is the top-grossing show on the Great White Way."
"A musical about the casting of spells seems to have cast its own, hypnotising audiences who have embraced it not so much as a musical as an event."
"Friends of Dorothy may be diverted by this musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz. But, although it has been a hit in New York, it seems all too typical of the modern Broadway musical: efficient, knowing and highly professional but more like a piece of industrial product than something that genuinely touches the heart or mind."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That, largely speaking, appears to be the mantra behind the London production of Broadway's celebrated record-breaker "Wicked." There have been tiny tweaks to Winnie Holzman's book, but the only people likely to notice are the show's devoted fans."
"Wicked is packed with spectacular coups de theatre and some magical lighting effects"
"At times the show undoubtedly slips into the preachy, but mercifully Winnie Holzman's script keeps the gags coming as it cleverly subverts the film that spawned it. And Joe Mantello's production, on a Heath Robinsonish design by Eugene Lee, is packed with spectacular coups de theatre and some magical lighting effects by Kenneth Posner."
"It proves far more enjoyable than I had dared to hope, and deserves a wider audience than adolescent schoolgirls."
