Theatre and musicals in Melbourne this week

Hey Melbourne, the Mormons are back! After wowing audiences in Sydney with plenty of "did they really just say that?” humour, The Book of Mormon is heading to the Princess Theatre from February 6. This somewhat unconventional musical comedy cleaned up at the Tony Awards after it debuted on Broadway in 2011, going on to break box office records and garner near-unanimous critical acclaim when it opened on London’s West End. When tickets for the show’s Australian debut in Melbourne were released in 2015 – nearly a year in advance of opening night – the Princess Theatre recorded its highest pre-sale period of any production in its 159-year history, also going on to win the Helpmann Award for Best Musical. For the uninitiated, The Book of Mormon follows two inept Mormon missionaries from Salt Lake City on their journey to save mortal souls in a corner of Uganda ruled by a one-eyed warlord. It’s the brainchild of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone – hence, you can expect a lot of explicit language – along with Avenue Q and Frozen co-creator Robert Lopez.  So what’s the secret of the show’s success? As Time Out London’s Theatre and Dance Editor Andrzej Lukowski wrote, Mormon was always going to be a hit, but what made it into the Mormania phenomenon is the fact that non-South Park fans love it too. The songs are excellent. Filthy, witty and outrageous, but also sumptuous and note-perfect, they nod to the golden age of the American musical.  As for how the show has...

Silly season is upon us – if you’re ready to pop the Champers, laugh ’til your belly hurts and revel in tricks you didn’t know were humanly possible, strap in for a glittering night at Blanc de Blanc Encore.  The cabaret spectacle lands at Melbourne’s brand-new Spiegel Haus in late October as the headline affair. The pop-up entertainment precinct has set up camp on the rooftop of the Golden Square Car Park on Lonsdale Street ready to dazzle Melburnians.  Blanc de Blanc Encore fuses a delectable mix of circus, cabaret, jazz and comedy (with a couple of bottles of bubbles for good measure) for an effervescent night out – leave the kids at home for this one. Blanc de Blanc Encore is the second instalment of, you guessed it, Blanc de Blanc, when it visited Melbourne in 2017. Don’t fret if you didn’t see the first one – you’ll enjoy the encore every bit as much as a standalone. It’s been a hit internationally, and arrives off the back of extended Brisbane and Sydney seasons. Watch Blanc de Blanc Encore at the Spiegel Haus Melbourne from October 31. Group and special events packages are available just in time for Chrissy party planning. Book your tickets here.

When we first glimpse bone-wielding apes careening around a towering, dark monolith in the opening moments of Stanley Kubrick’s epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, we are awestruck and alarmed by its ominous presence.  So, too, the vast pier of the West Gate Bridge that dominates the Southbank Theatre’s Sumner Stage during labourer-turned-playwright Dennis McIntosh’s new work, West Gate. Simply but astonishingly realised by set and costume designer Christina Smith, the foreboding presence of this towering structure makes Cassandras of us all.  Even as the showering sparks of its creation pierce the dark, with lighting designer Niklas Pajanti working hand in glove with Smith to deploy the lighting rig as construction gantries, we are bitterly aware that it will fall, much like Troy. Is that a spoiler? Only if you’re oblivious to the tragic history of one of Melbourne’s darkest days.  Just before midday on October 15, 1970, a 112-metre, 2,000-tonne span of the under-construction steel box girder bridge twisted and tore free of its fatally flawed moorings. The cataclysmic plunge of steel and stone erupted in a quagmire of mud and flames.  Still Australia’s biggest industrial disaster to this day, the catastrophe claimed 35 lives, injuring 18 more. The subsequent Royal Commission identified the flawed design of Freeman Fox and Partners, the engineers responsible for another fatal collapse in Wales just a few months earlier, and the removed contractor, World Services and...