Cast assembles for Billy Elliot musical

Published Tuesday 21 December 2004 at 15:25 by Alistair Smith

Haydn Gwynn, Tim Healey and Anne Rogers will join the cast of Billy Elliot the Musical when it opens at the Victoria Palace Theatre in the new year.

Gwynn will play Billy’s dance teacher, Mrs Wilkinson, Healey will play his father and Rogers will appear as his grandmother. They will join James Lomas, George Maguire and Liam Mower who will alternate in the title role.

The cast will also feature Joe Caffrey, Steve Elias, Trevor Fox and Stephanie Putson. Teams of three child actors will rotate the parts of his two friends. These are Havana Bailey, Emma Hudson and Lucy Stephenson as Debbie, and Brad Kavanagh, Ashley Lloyd and Ryan Longbottom as Michael.

Produced by Old Vic Productions and Working Title, the West End show has the film’s original creative team of director Stephen Daldry, writer Lee Hall and choreographer Peter Darling with a new score composed by Elton John. It is designed by Ian McNeil with costumes by Sue Blane and musical supervision by Martin Koch. It opens on May 11 with previews from March 24.

•Ruby Wax will star at the Wyndhams Theatre in the West End production of The Witches next March.

She will appear as The Grand High Witch in a strictly limited five-week run from March 3 to April 2. The play, which has been adapted from Roald Dahl’s book by David Wood, will be directed by Jonathan Church. However, Wax will not appear in the play’s 17-date UK tour, which opens on January 17 at the Richmond Theatre and runs to June 26.

It will be produced by the David Wood Company and Ambassador Theatre Group in association with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company.

•West End producer Mark Goucher has announced that his production of Debbie Does Dallas, a musical version of the notorious seventies porn film, will be given a try-out season at the Old Fire Station Theatre, Oxford. The show will be directed by Christian Durram and will run for ten performances only from March 9 to 19.

Goucher’s West End production of Saturday Night Fever will begin its next UK tour on September 12 at the Manchester Opera House, before embarking on a 36-week national tour. He will also produce the first national tour of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, directed by Irina Brown, starting in September.

Meanwhile, in association with Adam Kenwright Productions and Wimbledon Theatre Productions, Goucher will present the first ever UK tour of Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, based on the 1999 Broadway production, which starred Bernadette Peters. The new version is directed by Tim Sheader and will open at The Churchill Theatre, Bromley on August 26.

•Small Things by Enda Walsh will launch Paines Plough’s This Other England season at the Menier Chocolate Factory. It is the company’s final season under the artistic directorship of Vicky Featherstone and will open on January 28 with Walsh’s new play, which will be directed by Featherstone. The cast consists of Valerie Lilley and Bernard Gallagher.

Ben Whishaw and Fraser Ayres will join Robert Boulter, Dominic Hall, Harry Kent, Sophie Stanton and Shane Zaza in Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur, directed by John Tiffany which will open on March 2. Paola Dionisotti will appear in David Greig’s Pyrenees directed by Featherstone, which opens on March 30. The final production of the season will see Paul Thomas Hickey join an ensemble of Dundee Rep actors in Douglas Maxwell’s If Destroyed True, which opens on April 26.

•The West Yorkshire Playhouse’s production of Ying Tong - A Walk with the Goons will transfer to the New Ambassadors Theatre in February.

Written by Roy Smiles, it examines Spike Milligan’s lifetime fight against mental illness, alongside sketches that celebrate the fifties radio comedy series, The Goons. It is the first part of Smiles’ Dead Comedian’s trilogy, the remaining two parts being about Tony Hancock and Groucho Marx.

The cast includes Jeremy Child, James Clyde, Christian Patterson and Peter Temple. It will be directed by Michael Kingsbury, with design by Peter McKintosh, music by Richard Taylor, lighting by Tony Simpson and sound by Mic Pool.

It is presented by Michael Codron, National Angels Limited and Ambassador Theatre Group in association with Incidental Colman, Mick Perrin Productions and West Yorkshire Playhouse. It will run from February 10 to June 4.

•Richard Eyre will direct a new version of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Almeida Theatre with Eve Best playing the title role. The cast also includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Lisa Dillon, Iain Glen, Jamie Sives and Gillian Raine, with design by Rob Howell and lighting by Peter Mumford. The production will run from March 10 to April 30.