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SYDNEY - Theatre star Rob Guest is critically ill in hospital after suffering a stroke.
Guest, 57, currently starring in the musical Wicked, was admitted to Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital last night, a spokeswoman for the production said.
Guest was born in Britain but enjoyed fame as a pop star in New Zealand in the 1970s and '80s and spent a decade in Las Vegas.
His stage musical career took him to Australia where he starred in Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera.
Guest is the world's longest serving Phantom having played the role a record 2289 performances over seven years in front of Australian and New Zealand audiences.
Producer John Frost said the cast from Wicked in which Guest plays the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was "shocked".
"Rob Guest is one of Australian music theatre's biggest stars: there have been few bigger in our lifetime," Frost said.
"He is, nonetheless, the most easy-going of stars. He may have top billing but at all times he comes across to us - producers, fellow cast members and backstage crew - as an irrepressible, always cheerful optimist.
"An all round good bloke. All of us who know him are shocked."
It's understood his family has flown from New Zealand to be with him.
More recently Guest played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.
- AAP