The Apollo Victoria theatre will celebrate its 80th birthday later this year with a gala performance featuring West End stars past and present.
The special anniversary event will take place on 10 October, with all profit from the evening being donated to Cancer Research UK.
The Apollo Victoria’s gala performance will feature stars from its current show, the hit musical Wicked, alongside cast members from previous shows staged at the venue including Saturday Night Fever, Bombay Dreams and Billy Joel danc-ical Movin’ Out. The evening will also include a reunion of performers from the venue’s longest running show, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-skating extravaganza Starlight Express.
The Apollo Victoria theatre originally opened in 1930, when it was known as the New Victoria theatre and was used as both a theatre and a cinema. The 1950s saw the venue remodelled to host ballet and music performances, while in the 1980s it was once again reinvented as musical house, hosting a Petula Clark-led production of The Sound Of Music and Fiddler On The Roof, starring Topol. Starlight Express opened at the venue in March 1984, playing for eighteen years before closing in January 2002.
Current show Wicked has a way to go before it reaches Starlight Express’s record, but will celebrate its fourth West End birthday next month. The Oz-set story, which tells of how two magical girls grew into Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West, won the 2010 Laurence Olivier Audience Award for Most Popular Show as voted for by the users of Official London Theatre earlier this year.
MA