The best musicals in Sydney

In musical theatre circles, Cats is the show that everyone loves to hate, dismissing it as “weird” and “uncool”. So let me begin this review by stating that I love Cats. I listened to the cast recording over and over as a child, I met my best friend on a Cats mailing list (remember those?) when I was sixteen, and there's probably still some old Cats fanfiction floating around out there that I wrote in my teens. This much maligned show doesn't deserve the hate it gets.  When Cats was first performed in the early 1980s, it was hailed as groundbreaking, bridging the gap between concept musicals and mega musicals in a way no show had done before. It won both Olivier and Tony awards for best musical, and ran for decades on the West End and Broadway. These days, it’s viewed more as a “guilty pleasure” – the show you secretly enjoy but are supposed to pretend you don’t, lest you be seen as uncultured. But why? Concept musicals based around a theme rather than a traditional narrative have existed since the 1950s, with notable examples including Cabaret, Hair and Company. Dance-heavy musicals are also not a unique concept. Cats isn't even the only show to combine these two elements. But while shows like A Chorus Line and Pippin are hailed as iconic, Cats – which is essentially A Chorus Line with tails – is not shown the same love.  Cats may not be too heavy on the plot, but it’s a show for people who love the little details Much of the criticism surrounding Cats comes from wanting...

Ed's Note: Hailed by Rolling Stone as “the best rock musical ever”, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is on now at Sydney’s Carriageworks (you can buy tickets over here). Time Out critic Guy Webster reviewed the production last month when it was on at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre. Read on for his five-star review... ***** Imagine The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Frank-N-Furter raised in the American Midwest by Vivienne Westwood. Or Debbie Harry, if she grew up in a queer bathhouse in East Berlin. That’s Hedwig Schmidt: the glam-rock heart of Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, brought to spectacular life in the first Aussie revival since 2006. You have to picture this show as it began – in a sweaty basement club called the SqueezeBox during New York’s punk scene in 1994. This was a place where a house band performed rock tunes called “the music of gay bashers”, and punters put on messy drag to kick, scream and vamp on stage beside them. Hedwig was born out of this energy; a combination of cigarette ash, anarchism and smut inspired by Cameron Mitchell’s life in Berlin and Kansas and soundtracked by Trask’s work with the SqueezeBox band. It’s the closest I’ve come to calling a musical ‘punk’ without rolling my eyes. With its taboo-flouting lead and the unbridled chaos of its style, it is still as genuinely transgressive as it was thirty years ago. This production succeeds by replicating the intimacy and anger that created the show in the first place....

A season of love is about to rock the Sydney Opera House, with an exciting cast announced for the Harbour City’s brand new production of the musical that changed the course of Broadway as we know it – Jonathan Larson’s RENT. A celebration of love, life, art and the resilience of the human spirit, RENT takes audiences to the vibrant streets of New York City’s East Village in the early ’90s, where young people navigate poignant social issues and dreams are born, friendships are tested, and the power of love prevails against all odds. Fresh from his celebrated production of Guys & Dolls on Sydney Harbour, director Shaun Rennie has assembled some of Australia’s finest performers for this critically lauded production from Opera Australia and LPD Productions, which will make its debut in the Opera House’s Joan Sutherland Theatre from September 27. Henry Rollo (The Rocky Horror Show) plays Mark, a struggling documentary filmmaker and best friend of Roger, an HIV-positive musician recovering from heroin addiction, who will be played by Harry Targett (Dear Evan Hansen). Kristin Paulse (Tina - The Tina Turner Musical) is Mimi, a reckless and passionate exotic dancer who lives only for today. The Voice finalist Calista Nelmes (Jesus Christ Superstar) reprises her award-winning performance of the spirited Maureen, current girlfriend of Joanne, a tough, headstrong Harvard-educated lawyer played by Imani Williams (Hadestown). Philosophy teacher Collins, father figure and friend, is...