As Wicked celebrates two decades bewitching the West End, here’s everything you need to know about the untold story of the witches of Oz: from its powerhouse anniversary cast to the phenomenon behind it all.
Few musicals have cast quite as long a spell over the West End as Wicked. Now in its 20th anniversary year at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, the untold story of the witches of Oz remains one of London’s most beloved nights out, and 2026 brings a genuinely special moment to catch it: a powerhouse anniversary company and a weekend of celebrations marking two decades since it first cast its spell on London.
Leading that company are Emma Kingston as Elphaba and Zizi Strallen as Glinda, joined by Broadway’s Jordan Litz, making his West End debut as Fiyero. Whether you’ve seen it a dozen times or never at all, there’s rarely been a better moment to experience Wicked.
View live availability for Wicked tickets here
Key dates and venue
- Apollo Victoria Theatre: currently booking to 30 May 2027
- Anniversary weekend celebrations: Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026
What is Wicked about?
Long before Dorothy ever landed in Oz, two young women meet at Shiz University, and nothing about Oz will ever look the same again. Elphaba is green-skinned, fiercely intelligent and used to being an outsider. Glinda is glamorous, popular and used to being adored. They should have nothing in common, and yet an unlikely, transformative friendship begins to take shape between them.
As the two women’s paths diverge, one drawn towards power and popularity, the other towards principle and rebellion, Wicked tells the untold story of how the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good came to be exactly who The Wizard of Oz always told us they were, and asks how much of that story we should really trust.
It’s a musical about friendship, ambition, prejudice and the way history gets written by the winners, wrapped inside one of the most spectacular productions in the West End, with a score that shifts effortlessly between soaring anthems and genuine comedy.
The history of Wicked
Wicked is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is itself a reimagining of L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the perspective of its most famous villain. The musical adaptation, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman, opened on Broadway in 2003, where it became a phenomenon and has run continuously ever since.
The West End production opened at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in September 2006, and has been running there continuously for two decades, making it one of the longest-running musicals in West End history. In late 2025, the show marked its 7,500th London performance, and now stands among the top ten longest-running productions ever to play the West End.
Who is in Wicked?
- Elphaba: Emma Kingston (Heathers The Musical) — WhatsOnStage Award winner for Best Takeover Performance in 2026
- Glinda: Zizi Strallen (Mary Poppins)
- Fiyero: Jordan Litz (West Side Story, Broadway) — making his West End debut after more than 1,700 performances in the role on Broadway and the US tour
- Madame Morrible: Claire Machin (Les Misérables)
- The Wizard: Michael Matus (The Baker’s Wife)
- Nessarose: Yara Fabricante
- Doctor Dillamond: David McKechnie (Standing at the Sky’s Edge)
- Boq: Ross Carpenter (The Book of Mormon)
Emma Kingston and Zizi Strallen lead the anniversary company having already established themselves as one of the West End’s most acclaimed pairings, recently appearing together on BBC One’s Big Night of Musicals. Kingston’s WhatsOnStage Award win reflects the impact she has made in the role.
Jordan Litz’s casting is a genuine event in its own right, a rare direct transfer from Broadway to the West End. He arrives in London having completed more than 1,700 performances as Fiyero across Broadway and the US national tour, making him the longest-running Fiyero in the production’s history, and having joined the Broadway company during New York’s own 20th-anniversary year before making the move to London.
The creators: Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman
Stephen Schwartz is one of the most successful composer-lyricists in modern musical theatre history, with a body of work stretching from Godspell and Pippin in the 1970s to his Oscar-winning songs for Disney’s Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Wicked stands as the defining achievement of his career, its score, from Defying Gravity to For Good, now among the most performed and recognisable in the modern musical theatre canon.
Winnie Holzman, best known before Wicked as the creator of the acclaimed teen drama My So-Called Life, wrote the musical’s book, translating Gregory Maguire’s dense, adult novel into a stage story capable of carrying both spectacle and genuine emotional weight.
The creative team
- Music and Lyrics: Stephen Schwartz
- Book: Winnie Holzman
- Musical Staging: Wayne Cilento
- Scenic Design: Eugene Lee
- Costume Design: Susan Hilferty
- Lighting Design: Kenneth Posner
- Sound Design: Tony Meola
Wicked is produced by Marc Platt, Universal Stage Productions, The Araca Group, Jon B Platt and David Stone. The production’s design team, largely unchanged since its original Broadway staging, has helped make Wicked’s visual world, from the mechanical dragon above the proscenium to the Emerald City itself, as instantly recognisable as its score.
Screen history
Wicked’s cultural footprint expanded enormously with the release of a two-part film adaptation, directed by Jon M Chu and starring Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda. The first film, released in 2024, was a global phenomenon; the second, Wicked: For Good, followed in November 2025 and became one of the highest-grossing films ever based on a Broadway musical.
For many newer fans, the films may now be their first point of contact with the story. What the stage version offers that no screen adaptation can replicate is the sheer scale of experiencing Defying Gravity live, performed at full volume in a packed theatre, alongside the intimacy of a production built, from the outset, for a live audience rather than a camera.
Why Wicked matters
Wicked endures because it does something genuinely rare: it takes one of the most familiar stories in Western popular culture and asks its audience to fundamentally reconsider who the villain really is. In doing so, it becomes a story about how narratives get shaped by those in power, about prejudice dressed up as fear, and about the cost of choosing popularity over principle.
Two decades on, and in the wake of a wildly successful film adaptation introducing the story to an entirely new generation, that message shows no sign of losing its relevance. Its central friendship, between two women who begin as opposites and become each other’s truest allies, remains the emotional engine that keeps audiences coming back, in London and around the world.
The score
Stephen Schwartz’s score for Wicked is one of the defining musical theatre scores of the 21st century, blending soaring pop-influenced anthems with witty, character-driven comic numbers and genuinely moving ballads.
The Wizard and I and Defying Gravity chart Elphaba’s journey from hopeful outsider to defiant rebel, the latter reliably bringing audiences to their feet at the end of Act One. Popular is one of musical theatre’s great comic numbers, while For Good, the show’s closing duet between Elphaba and Glinda, has become a modern standard in its own right, performed at everything from weddings to graduations. Together, the score doesn’t just support Wicked’s story, it is arguably the single biggest reason the show has endured for twenty years.
What to expect on the night
Expect a big, spectacular, emotionally engaging night of musical theatre, with a production design that remains genuinely dazzling two decades after it first opened. The show balances real comedy with moments of real heart, and its Act One finale is one of the most celebrated in the West End.
- Age guidance: Generally suitable for ages 7+, though very young children may find some scenes and staging intense
- Running time: Approximately 2 hours 45 minutes, including one interval
- Performance schedule: Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm, with matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2.30pm
Is Wicked worth seeing?
Unquestionably. Wicked’s twenty-year West End run, and its status as one of the most successful musicals of all time, speaks for itself, but this anniversary year makes it a particularly special time to see it, with a genuinely outstanding company led by Emma Kingston and Zizi Strallen, and a real Broadway-to-West-End event in Jordan Litz’s Fiyero.
Whether you’re a lifelong fan, newly converted by the films, or coming to the story fresh, Wicked remains one of the most purely satisfying nights out in London theatre: spectacular, funny, moving, and built around one of the great scores in modern musical theatre.
Book tickets to Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre here
Plan your visit to Wicked
- Address: Apollo Victoria Theatre, 17 Wilton Road, London SW1V 1LG
- Booking dates: Currently booking to 30 May 2027
- Performance schedule: Tuesday–Saturday 7.30pm, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday 2.30pm
- Running time: Approximately 2 hours 45 minutes, including one interval
- Age guidance: Generally suitable for ages 7+
- Getting there: Victoria (Victoria, Circle and District lines, and National Rail)
Apollo Victoria Theatre, London
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