History of the Show

The Witches of Eastwick is based on the 1984 novel of the same name by John Updike, and the Warner Bros. film starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer. The musical was originally produced for the West End stage by Cameron Mackintosh, who was looking for a new project for his young writing team of John Dempsey (lyrics and book) and Dana P. Rowe (music) following the success of The Fix. He also engaged the same director, Eric Schaeffer, and the show opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in July 2000. Ian McShane starred as Darryl Van Horne, with Maria Friedman (Sukie), Lucie Arnaz (Alexandra) and Joanna Riding (Jane) as the three witches.

The show moved in 2001 to the smaller Prince of Wales Theatre with the american actor Clarke Peters (Detective Lester Freamon in The Wire) taking over as Darryl. Josefina Gabrielle and Rebecca Thornhill played Alex and Sukie, although Joanna Riding stayed in her role as Jane having recieved an Olivier award nomination for her protrayal. (She won the award for Best Actress in a Musical for Eliza in My Fair Lady in 2003.) At this point the song 'Who's the Man' which aparts on the original soundtrack CD was replaced by 'Glory of Me'. The show recieved generally favourable reviews, but closed on October 27, 2001, partly as a result of falling victim to the downturn in audiences following the 9/11 attacks.

There were then a number of international productions, including in Australia where a number of script and lyric changes were made in order to make the show 'darker' and Sukie's number 'Loose Ends' was cut. This appears to be the version of the show that was made available for amateur release. However the show was then revived in the USA in 2007 by Eric Schaeffer, at the Signature Theatre in Virginia where he was now artistic director. Further changes were made, numbers cut ('I Love a Little Town') and others added ('Your Wildest Dreams'). There then followed a UK Tour running from August 2008 to May 2009, incorporating yet more changes to the script and the numbers. Marti Pellow starred as Darryl Van Horne and Rebecca Thornhill returned as Sukie. Amateur rights were withdrawn due to this tour, making ours the last amateur production in the UK.