Theatre and musicals in Sydney this week

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

Do you love the cut and thrust of MasterChef a little too much? Do you scream at the TV screen, urging your favourite contestant to kill it? Is your snarling fervour just a wee bit more than might be deemed healthy? Like, bloodthirsty Hunger Games too much? If your answer is yeah, well, have we got the show for you. Parramatta-based Blush Opera took the brutality of reality TV to the next level with their wicked fun show Chop Chef earlier this year. Slicing and dicing the fates of six wannabes locked in a battle to the death over creating the best dish, this wickedly sharp satire of the mores and frankly too muches of cooking shows is opera, but not as you know it. Add a delirious dash of musical theatre and a pinch of viciously dark comedy and the recipe is a winner. Sure, some bodies are gonna be DOA by the end of the show – that’s nothing new for the operatic form – but they won’t be daintily fading away. Only one fierce competitor will be left standing, and no dirty trick is too hot for these kitchen rules. Created by Blush co-artistic directors Jermaine Chau and Paul Smith (Fancy Me Dead) and music director Luke Spicer, Chop Chef will cut a bloody swathe through Riverside Theatres. It's directed by Nicole Pingon and Kenneth Moraleda, with the knives out cast of Ayako Ohtake, Lisa Cooper, Jermaine Chau, Gavin Brown, Benjamin Caulkwell and Nick Geddes. Recorded live, it's been heated up in the microwave for an online watch party you can stream from home on Friday, July 16

UPDATE, June 28: As of June 26, the Greater Sydney region including the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong is under a compulsory two-week lockdown until 11.59pm on July 9. Many events in Sydney have therefore been cancelled or postponed until after this period. There is something perfect about Come From Away being the first theatre back on Melbourne's main stages. The musical is set on 9/11 in the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland, to which 38 planes were diverted when United States airspace was closed in the wake of the terrorist attack. The almost 7,000 passengers on board, terrified, claustrophobic and desperate for news about what was happening, were taken in by the people of Gander and surrounding towns, nearly doubling the population for five days. The townsfolk gave them food, shelter and most importantly, kindness and comfort during the most horrific time in recent American history – until 2020, of course.  The underlying message of kindness and compassion in the face of unspeakable horror is one that's sorely needed right now. When the planes begin to land, the women of Gander start up a collection for donations, with a song that could have been penned last year: "Can I help? Is there something I need to do, something to keep me from thinking of all the scenes on the tube? I need something to do 'cause I can't watch the news, no I can't watch the news anymore..." The feeling of helplessness, of being unable to tear yourself away from the news and of de

One look at some of the rabble-rousing genius of queer filmmaker John Water’s more outré movies – like Pink Flamingos, with its infamous scene involving sublime drag queen Divine eating dog poop – and you can totally see why he attracted (and totally embraced) the honorary title the Pope of Trash. But while his films gleefully subvert pretty much all of the rules, a couple of his more musically minded creations have gone on to capture mainstream plaudits too, with nary a sign of poo. There’s the ‘60s-set joy of ten dance competition Hairspray, which cast Divine alongside Ricki Lake and supreme being Debbie Harry, spawning a Broadway musical and a big-screen remake. And then there’s 1990 hit Cry-Baby. It's set a decade earlier, and Johnny Depp plays a James Dean-like delinquent heartthrob with a guitar who falls in love with good little rich girl Allison, igniting passion and parental panic. With Waters' inimitably cheeky wit, it blows up class constructs, hypocritical morality and impossible beauty standards while having a bloody good time about it. As Waters himself says, “Cry-Baby celebrates the joy all bad little teenage boys and girls feel the first time they hear music that causes trouble in their own homes. Parents hate the new sound, but the kids love it. Finally, the soundtrack of their young lives can begin.” It, too, spawned a smash-hit musical, and now it will bow at the Sydney Opera House from July 22-August 15, having picked up four Sydney Theatre Awards for its

When Singe Asian Female playwright Michelle Law set her mind to conjuring a follow-up to that hilarious skewering of racist microaggressions, she landed on the idea of entering a beauty pageant for research. Sadly for her, she was prevented by age limit rules. How rude. But that little obstacle didn’t put her off the subject, which is ripe for lampooning. The result is Miss Peony, which will debut at Belvoir St on July 3, 2021 and run until August 1. Law will star alongside Mabel Li in an inter-generational story that features a take-charge Chinese grandma (who may or may nto be a ghost) coach a would-be beauty queen, as directed by Courtney Stewart. “The moment she told us the idea, we were like, ‘Yeah, of course’,” recalls Belvoir’s artistic director Eamon Flack. “We know Michelle can write a gag, and oh my gosh, she can write a plot. So it was a no-brainer from the outset.” Even the Never-ending Lockdown couldn’t put a stop to Miss Peony, or any of Belvoir’s grand plans. “It was in our 2020 season, and we were determined to try and save all of the new work, and we have managed to do that apart from The Jungle and the Sea, which will have to wait.” The show promises “a glitzy, glamorous and slightly unhinged comedy about being caught between two generations and two cultures, and what happens when the ghosts of generations past come back to haunt you, for real,” and we can’t wait to sashay away with the winner’s sash. What's next? Read the first half of Belvoir's 2021 season

UPDATE, June 28: As of June 26, the Greater Sydney region including the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong is under a compulsory two-week lockdown until 11.59pm on July 9. Many events in Sydney have therefore been cancelled or postponed until after this period. They say pop will eat itself, and the same certainly true for Broadway. Everyone loves a show about putting on a show, whether's it's backstage hauntings in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera or the more low-key comedy of The Wedding Singer. Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s musical Merrily We Roll Along is one of the very best of the self-referential showbiz shows. Adapting and updating a 1939 play by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, the show depicts the story of a man called Franklin Shepard, a composer who has chucked in a gig writing musicals to produce Hollywood movies instead. It grapples with the price of success and those that get left behind.  Hayes Theatre Co will present a razzle-dazzle take on the fabulous show that traces Franklin's life backwards, from movie-making fame to the Broadway game, depicting how he became the man he is today. Emerging talent Andrew Coshan (Jersey Boys) will play Franklin. He’ll be joined by Everybody Loves Lucy star Elise McCann and Xanadu lead Ainsley Melham, alongside a cast including Georgina Hopson (West Side Story) and Aaron Tsindos (Muriel’s Wedding). They’ll be directed by one of Australian musical theatre’s finest, Dean Bryant (Little Shop of H

Palawa man Nathan Maynard was named as Belvoir St’s 2019 Balnaves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fellow and set to work on a modern tragedy set in his home state of Lutrawita/Tasmania. Now Belvoir audiences will get to see the fruits of that collaboration when At What Cost? debuts on August 7, 2021. Directed by Isaac Drandic, the play centres on a young father and First Nations man, Dan, who’s focused on doing right by his family while also living up to his responsibilities to the land and his community. But he finds himself irked by others claiming to be Palawa that he hasn’t heard of before, and who haven’t done the work locally. The button-pushing play asks “Are they legit? Or are they ‘tick-a-box’? Who decides? And how?” With the play described as “A trip for old mob and new back into a knotty past,” Belvoir’s artistic director Eamon Flack says it’s a remarkable work that reminds him a little of British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. “It’s damn fine. It’s almost impossible to write a true tragedy nowadays, and Nathan’s done it. It gets at human foibles, and a very vexed question for Indigenous Australia. There’s no one answer, and Nathan's written with great conviction about that.” What's next? Read the first half of Belvoir's 2021 season here. 

UPDATE, June 28: As of June 26, the Greater Sydney region including the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong is under a compulsory two-week lockdown until 11.59pm on July 9. Many events in Sydney have therefore been cancelled or postponed until after this period. Once is a wildly popular musical film that won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and had a soundtrack that was nominated for a Grammy. The stage musical, based on the film and sharing its soundtrack, went on to pick up more awards: the Olivier Award, Drama Desk awards and Tony Awards. Once, it seems, is almost closer to being an EGOT than Elton John or Bette Midler. Now, you can soak up that award-winning, stellar songwriting with Darlinghurst Theatre Company's new iteration. The season has just been extended through to August 6 due to popular demand. Once The Musical is based on the film written by John Carney with book by Enda Walsh. Music and lyrics are by the film's famously non-actor protagonists Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. This production harnesses the film's solid baseline with additional magic added by director Richard Carroll and the local creative team. Once The Musical is also peppered with dance sequences from the local staging of Hamilton's director Amy Campbell. If you're unfamiliar, Once follows the journey of a struggling busker who encounters a gifted Czech pianist and they embark on a will-they, won't-they songwriting adventure. The two literally make beautiful music together

Turn on the news recently and there’s a fair chance you’ll have seen one of several shocking reports on a disturbing rape culture seemingly festering in our universities. Bold new drama Wherever She Wanders from Kendall Feaver (The Almighty Sometimes) tackles the nature of the beast head on. Set in one of Australia’s oldest residential colleges, as far as the public knows, scandal doesn’t happen here. But what goes on behind closed mahogany doors tells a different story, and abundant coffers can cover up all sorts of unsavoury goings on. That gets complicated when resident student and aspiring journalist Nikki Gonçalves interviews Jo Mulligan, the first female Master in the college’s hundred-year history and the person who writes those ‘never happened’ cheques. When a serious allegation is made, Jo sees it as a case of boys will be boys, but Nikki, cannot and will not accept that. A battle rages on social media, unleashing chaotic commenters and vulnerable people get caught in the crossfire. As Griffin’s artistic director Declan Greene sees it, the story is sadly all too familiar. “We had to postpone this in 2020, and we were all really sad about that, but one of the things that’s really awful about Wherever She Wanders one is that there’s no fear of this story becoming irrelevant anytime soon,” he says. “It reminds us of its relevance with alarming frequency. It’s an extraordinary brave play that’s really about an intergenerational conflict, questioning the values of those w