Musical theatre in Sydney

It has a decades-old pedigree of creating animated classics, but Disney isn't shy about bringing its cartoon heroes into the real world. Not only is the entertainment giant in the process of transposing many of its most beloved animated films into live-action remakes, but it also continues to expand its portfolio of stage musicals. Following in the footsteps of global megahits Aladdin and The Lion King, Disney's frosty fable Frozen is the latest story to tread the boards – a decision that was surely a no-brainer for the show’s creators at Disney Theatrical. Not only is the movie original one of the most wildly successful animated blockbusters of recent years, but the soundtrack is also laced with Broadway-worthy belters and up-tempo earworms including arguably the most cherished song in the Disney canon since Aladdin’s ‘A Whole New World’, the Idina Menzel-immortalised ‘Let it Go’. Traditionally, Disney’s model for rolling out its stage musicals has been pretty firmly stamped: debut the show on Broadway, followed by a US tour before transferring to London’s West End and then, box office willing, the rest of the world. Aladdin, for example, premiered in New York in July of 2011, a full six years before the show eventually made its way to Australia. However, these are strange times we’re living in, especially when it comes to touring theatre. While stages in the majority of cities around the world remain shuttered due to the ongoing health crisis, Australia’s theatres are onc

After opening in Las Vegas and touring to London and Berlin, Magic Mike Live opened in Sydney just in the nick of time to take our minds off the outside world and lose our fears about what 2021 could have in store for us amongst a sea of ripped bodies belonging to the Aussie cast of this raunchy romp.  Don’t come in expecting the musical version of the films from which this live show takes its namesake. Instead, be prepared for a woke update of the classic male strip show. Magic Mike Live hands the power over to its audience, using a clever red herring to center the female gaze – however it is not only female-identifying folk who’ll get a rise out of the troupe of brawny dancers.  The show is the brainchild of dancer-turned-movie star Channing Tatum – who fronted up, stripped down, and sweated through both big screen outings. Tatum teamed up with the movies’ choreographers Allison Faulk and Teresa Espinosa to develop a cabaret-like strip show where women can feel empowered. This is a show best enjoyed without giving too much away before you arrive. What you can expect is plenty of hot and heavy dancing from a squad of charismatic men loaded with plenty of gyrations, infatuations, flips and fantasy fuel – with live singing, music, aerial arts and stunts in addition to all the artful removal of clothing. At a time when toxic masculinity is under the microscope, there’s really something to watching men embody ‘manliness’ while tap dancing and handing out roses as a ‘waiter’ call

Is Hamilton, the smash-hit American history musical that won a whopping 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize when it debuted on Broadway in 2015 and won the hearts of critics and audiences the world over, as good as everyone says? In a word, yes. If you want to stop reading here and just book your tickets, we’ll understand.  There is a reason it is the most hyped show on Earth, and its writer and first star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, is now a household name. Some 3 million people watched the musical when it appeared on Disney Plus in July 2020, and almost 8 million more have seen it live, in cities across the US and in London’s West End. Now it’s Sydney’s turn, with the only production of the show in the world right now playing at the Lyric Theatre.  With the soundtrack available on Spotify and the original Broadway cast version available to anyone with a Disney Plus account on demand, Hamilton is competing not so much with other musicals for your dollars and attention (there are no other shows of this type that can match the show’s tactical brilliance), but with itself. Most in the audience are at least familiar with the show by this point, and quite a few are able to mouth along to every word behind their masks. If you can see the original Broadway version any time you want and listen to the soundtrack 24 hours a day, what power does the staged version still hold?  In a word, magic. The entire cast is extraordinary, with every dance move sharp as a tack and the constantly shifting

Her arrest, trial, conviction, incarceration and eventual release kept the nation on the edge of its seat from the moment she was stopped by customs officers at Bali's Denpasar Airport in 2004. And the saga of Schapelle Corby has been doing the same for theatre fans since the 2019 premiere of this musical biopic.   Schapelle, Schapelle the comedy musical is back on the Sydney stage for the 2021 Sydney Comedy Festival, serendipitously timed (suspiciously so?) to coincide with the real-life Schapelle’s turn on Dancing with the Stars. Schapelle, Schapelle is proof that you don’t always need spectacular sets and big budgets to create a musical that hooks the attention of its audience. This is an engaging and well paced production brought to life by a pack of talented performers, with riveting songs and sometimes surprisingly complex choreography, all delivered with good humour. An on-stage band is separated from the action by a hip-height wall of brazenly yellow XXXX tinnies. With front-of-house staff dressed in tropical shirts and decorations crafted from boogie boards and disco balls, the vibe is set.  This show is based on the true events surrounding the Australian woman who set off to Bali with a pocket full of dreams and, whether she knew it or not, a boogie board bag full of marijuana. Schapelle (Kelsi Boyden) and by extension her family are portrayed as naive bogans, concerned for Schapelle’s welfare, loving in their own ways, and occasionally taking up offers like swimwea

After conquering Broadway and the West End, the Tony Award-winning musical based on the memoir of American lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel has finally arrived on a Sydney stage – care of STC in a co-production with MTC. And it is every bit the spectacular, life-affirming and tragic masterpiece that critics in New York and London have raved about. You might recognise Bechdel’s name from her eponymous test. The Bechdel test is a rough and ready shorthand way of checking a work of fiction’s feminist cred. It asks if it includes at least two female characters, if these characters have names, and if they have a conversation with each other about anything other than a man. If you’re a proud graphic novel geek, on the other hand, you’ll know her for Fun Home's original iteration. It’s a tragicomic look at her coming of age and coming out as a young queer woman in rural Pennsylvania, set in and around the funeral home her father inherited – the ‘Fun Home’, as she and her brothers call it. Charting her emerging sexuality, it also grapples with the fraught relationship she shared with her father. The stage adaption of Bechdel’s graphic memoir – by Jeanine Tesori, with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron – throws out the rulebook for musical theatre. We follow grown-up 43-year-old Alison Bechdel (Lucy Maunder) on a meta-theatrical journey into her past and the process of creating her biography. On the way, she encounters her child self, ‘Small Alison’ (Karelina Clarke), and her college-aged

Tony, Olivier and Green Room Award-winning musical Come From Away is finally about to touch down in Sydney this winter, after having to divert last year because of you know what. Which is oddly on-brand for a show that’s all about a massive global upheaval. Set in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the US 20 years ago, the Irene Sankoff and David Hein musical details the incredible true story of the teeny Canadian town that welcomed a fleet of diverted flights bearing folks from all over the world. For five days, the Newfoundland outpost of Gander hosted squadrons of disoriented passengers, with the locals making them feel right at home. The Christopher Ashley-helmed show with musical staging by Kelly Devine will now open at Haymarket’s atmospheric Capitol Theatre on Thursday June 3, 2021. Time Out Melbourne arts editor Nicola Dowse gave the show five stars, saying, “The underlying message of kindness and compassion in the face of unspeakable horror is one that's sorely needed right now... The musical captures the grief and terror of tragedy, but more importantly, that human kindness and compassion are essential salves in desperate times.” The cast includes American talents Sharriese Hamilton and Kolby Kindle as well as locals Zoe Gertz, Doug Hannsell, Katrina Retallick, Sarah Morrison and Simon Maiden, all accompanied be a nine-piece band on-stage. Producer Rodney Rigby can’t wait for Sydney audiences to see them do their wing. “We are thrilled that we have been

The madness of last year saw the tables turned on sharp-suited serial killer Patrick Bateman, taking a knife to the planned Sydney Opera House encore run of smash hit American Psycho the Musical. Now the Manhattan murderer is back with a vengeance, once more played by Ben Gerrard, who cut deep with his darkly comic take on the business card-obsessed maniac in director Alexander Berlage’s celebrated 2019 Hayes Theatre staging. The razor-sharp social satire spun from the Bret Easton Ellis novel and its big screen adaptation skewers toxic masculinity and ‘80s capitalist excess, drenching the Playhouse stage in designer labels, gaudy neon light and probably some blood sloshed on plastic sheeting. The show, which scooped up nine Sydney Theatre Awards for Hayes, will run from June 3-27. It has a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Riverdale), music and lyrics by Tony Award-winner Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening) and pumps to the beat of pop classics from Phil Collins, Tears for Fears and New Order. Pre-sale opens February 10, then all-in two days later. Sydney Opera House head of contemporary performance Ebony Bott says, “Reimagined through the discerning lens of Alexander Berlage, this dark comedy speaks of power, privilege, narcissism and greed, and encourages us to reflect on whether this darkness exists both within ourselves and the world around us.” Time Out reviewer Cassie Tongue said of the Hayes run, “Berlage performed a similar spiritual surgery on Cry-Baby last year at the Hay

Tizzy up your hair and whip out your powder blue dinner suits, because The Wedding Singer – the Musical Comedy is coming to Sydney. The megahit show will slow dance into the State Theatre in July 2021, following sold-out runs in the on Broadway and London’s West End. The hilarious musical comedy is based on the 1998 Adam Sandler movie of the same name, which follows the story of a wedding singer who is stood up at the altar, only to fall in love with a waitress who is unfortunately engaged to another man. The film is a love letter to the 1980s, with big hair and even bigger shoulder pads. The Wedding Singer – the Musical Comedy features music from Matthew Sklar (Elf the Musical) with the book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy (Herlihy is also responsible for writing The Wedding Singer film as well as Happy Gilmore and Billy Maddison). Producer David Venn says he couldn’t be happier to walk down the aisle with this show afteran extremely challenging year. “It’s such a joyful, nostalgic romp of pure rom-com fun, and hopefully just what the doctor ordered.” The cast for the big, bold and gloriously retro musical has been announced and includes the likes of Christian Charisiou (Robbie Hart), Teagan Wouters (Julia), Kirby Burgess (Linda) Stephen Mahy (Glen), Nadia Komazec (Holly), Ed Deganos (George), Hollie James (Angie), Haydan Hawkins (Sammy) and Susan-ann Walker as cheeky Grandma Rosie. The production will be led by director Alister Smith (Bring It On: The Musical) with musical

Were you even a teenager in the mid-‘90s if you didn’t thrash out in front of a mirror screaming, “You, you, you oughta know…” into a hairbrush? But enough about me, the smash-hit Broadway musical adapted from revered (by a certain generation) Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette’s seminal album Jagged Little Pill gets the all-singing, all-dancing treatment at the Theatre Royal Sydney in September. We’ll be the first audiences outside of New York to get our eyes on the musical theatre prize adapted from Morissette’s five Grammy Award-winning album, a show that was sadly shuttered three months into its run by the unfolding global shemozzle of 2020. The album was an international sensation when it was released in June 1995, securing her spot as the bestselling international debut artist in history, a title she still comfortably holds. Which should give any millennials reading this and shrugging a vague idea of the scale of its ubiquity back then. You could barely leave the house without hearing it floating on the wind from somewhere or other. It was a whole thing. Relaying the pressures of love and life on the suburban Healy family, trying to overcome the scar of a shocking event in their community, the show hangs on a mum named after album track ‘Mary Jane’. The gloriously emo lyrics of adored hits like ‘You Oughta Know,’ ‘Hand In My Pocket,’ and the ironically unaware of the actual meaning of ‘Ironic’ form the basis of the pop-rock show's emotional beats. And as a bon

We've spoken about ghosts at the Sydney Opera House before, and the lights left on to keep them company. But now the greatest phantom of them all is set to haunt the iconic white sails. Opera Australia, in association with The Really Useful Group, will strike up the discordant organ to announce, with a caped flourish, the arrival of arguably Andrew Lloyd Webber's most famous musical. The Phantom of the Opera will open on some as yet undisclosed date in September, with West Side Story star Josh Piterman in the title role (and ghoulish half face mask). The Aussie star was just recently bringing The Music of the Night to the West End, playing the Phantom in London right up until that production was forced to shut down. “Words cannot describe how I feel about being cast in this Sydney Opera House season,” Piterman says. "The role of the Phantom has truly been a lifelong dream of mine and donning the mask on the West End stage in such a legendary production was magical in every way. Experiencing the global effects of [lockdown], especially on the theatre industry over the past year, has been difficult for so many. Which makes it an even bigger honour to now be able to play the Phantom at home, helping to resurrect our industry and bring people back to our theatres.”  Unbelievably, it's the first time the box office smash will grace the Opera House's Joan Sutherland stage in its near 35-year history. And you can bet it's going to dazzle, right down to the fateful plunge of the cent

Christmas is undeniably camp. All that glittering tinsel. And what could be camper than Calamity Jane star Virginia Gay leading an all-star Aussie pantomime for Belvoir’s dramatic flourish of an ending to 2021? Pantos, as they are more affectionately known, are known for fielding massive stars in super-camp stagings of (usually) fairytales, with lots of gender fluidity, booing at bad guys and general audience hilarity.  “Right when lockdown first hit, I got an email from Virginia who was in LA, and she’d just come from London where she’d seen, for the first time in her life, a panto, and it blew her mind,” Belvoir’s artistic director Eamon Flack told us. “She was like, ‘I love these so much. I want to write one for Belvoir’.” She got no arguments, and so The Boomkak Panto will see out the year in style. And it addresses one of the most Aussie stories of all: a big developer muscling in on a small community that is not having a bar of it. This regional outpost launches into a David and Goliath battle to save their town, which is full of happy families, refreshing diversity and the occasional rivalry. They all draw together in a battle for survival and, in a meta-textual twist, fight back by staging their own pantomime. “It’s a suitably ridiculous plotline, but completely on theme for Belvoir,” Flack says. “My nickname for it is the panto panto, because it is a panto about putting on a panto. It’s just an excuse to pack as much theatrical joy into one plot as you can possibly s

Buff up your glass slippers and jump in your enormous pumpkin coach, because you shall go to the ball. Opera Australia and the Gordon Frost Organisation will present the Australian premiere of the Tony Award-wining Broadway sensation Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella at the Capitol Theatre this November. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 30, but get in quick, because they are sure to disappear faster than a powder blue ball gown at the stroke of midnight. You’ll get all the fairytale's wonder you expect and more, but there’s a new twist to this beloved classic. It might be set in a realm of magic and wonder, but the poor, unloved girl who is cruelly cast off by her stepmother and set to sweeping floors actually hails from our modern times. Expect her to have plenty to say, then, about what a woman wants, and to forge her own way to happily ever after, dragging the prince along with her.  Rodgers and Hammerstein originally wrote their take on the beloved bedtime story for a 1957 telemovie starring the inimitable Julie Andrews. She scored an Emmy for it, no less,  seven years before she was swept up, up and above London’s chimneys in big-screen fantasy Mary Poppins. Her turn as Cinderella drew a whopping 100 million viewers. Many have followed in her footsteps since, including a 1997 re-do featuring Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg. We can’t wait to see who dons the glass slippers when the show opens in Sydney, with auditions about to get underway. What we do know is