Melbourne theatre and musicals in December

Long before it was an Academy Award-winning film, Chicago was a hit Broadway musical. Penned by musical theatre's dynamic duo John Kander and Fred Ebb, the musical was only a minor splash when it premiered in 1975. But when it was given a stripped back and sexed up new production in 1996, it became an immediate sensation and eventually the longest running Broadway revival of all time. 

John Kander and Fred Ebb know a thing or two about prison musicals, having written Chicago in the mid-1970s. A sexed-up, pared-back revival in 1996 was a smash hit, with the razzle-dazzle of showbiz turning the Cook County Jail into a vaudeville stage. In the late 1980s, Kander and Ebb created another musical set inside a prison, but the wicked sense of fun that permeates Chicago is nowhere to be seen in the grim Argentinian prison we find ourselves in here.

When Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins premiered in 1990, George Bush Sr was in power and the Gulf War was underway. Audiences during war time weren’t really ready for a musical about the dark heart of the American dream, and it closed early. In 2004 it was remounted on Broadway and won four Tonys. Its time had come. Come from Away feels like the reverse: a musical that suits its time, is perhaps even flattered a little by it. 

Looking at Bernadette Robinson, it’s difficult to believe that one diminutive woman could hold so many voices inside of her. But there are few singers who are able to so accurately mimic the divas of years gone by. This show was crafted for her unique talents by Joanna Murray-Smith and involves her channelling Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas, and telling the stories of five ordinary women who connected with them.

There has always been a stalking, uneasy relationship between science and art; mutual distrust and suspicion keep both camps in perpetual intractability. But they aren’t as ideologically opposed as they seem. Both disciplines are preoccupied with a search for truths, for insights that can make our journey across this planet smoother, and both are crippled by what the late Harold Bloom termed the anxiety of influence. 

It’s 1889 in Cornwall. It’s a freezing winter night. A suited stranger interrupts a family dinner and introduces them to a strange, black substance pooled within a lantern. This is oil, and it shocks everyone into excitement or doubt – it ignites into a warm, thick tongue of flame, but gives off a peculiar smell. 

The first rule of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is that you don’t talk about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Safeguarding spoilers is an expected responsibility for anyone who attends the Potter-verse’s first on-stage outing. There’s even a hashtag: #KeepTheSecrets. But in truth (as far as theatre critique is concerned, at least), JK Rowling needn’t have worried. 

The Australian Shakespeare Company has been bringing us Shakespeare Under the Stars for more than 30 years, so it’s safe to say they know their way around the Bard. This year, they’re tackling Hamlet, with the criminally underrated Andre de Vanny (Swansong) in the title role. 

British playwright Simon Stephens’ portrait of teenage angst and violence in schools was almost universally adored when it debuted at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre in 2009. Compared to the likes of The History Boys and Lord of the Flies, the play went on to London and Broadway, and almost as quickly ended up on school required reading lists everywhere.