Audiences love it, but critics are luke-warm. David Spicer speaks to the writers of the musical, who confirm that changes are planned as it moves into new cities.
At the media call Baz Luhrmann was a little on edge. It was the day before the World Premiere and a vital ingredient was missing from the performance for the large media contingent.
Bringing brand new Australian musicals to the stage is a thrilling, expensive, nail-biting ride. FRANK HATHERLEY talks to some brave theatre people who are currently taking the plunge. They are all discovering that musicals need to be re-written and re-written and then some.
Top producer John Frost had a warning for Jill Walsh and Karen Strahan as they prepared to stage their first professional, self-written musical. “If anything can go wrong,” he said, “it usually does go wrong.”
Life Like Company will present a new production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony Award winning musical PASSION, playing four nights only at The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne from 5-8 November, 2014.
The complex landscape of the human heart is the subject of PASSION, a haunting, intensely emotional musical by the creators of Into The Woods and Sunday In The Park With George.
The original Broadway production of PASSION received 10 TONY Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.
Time was fleeting at The Rocky Horror Show media call, so David Spicer asked instead if he could have lunch with the musical’s creator Richard O’Brien. The legendary writer and actor was in Australia (in fine form) for the premiere of the 40th anniversary production.
We sat down in the courtyard of a posh Brisbane hotel and ordered refreshments.
Sitting with the 71 year old was his third wife (German born) Sabrina Graf, who was introduced to The Rocky Horror Show as a girl, when her father showed her the movie.
John Paul Young joins the cast of GREASE for its Perth, Adelaide, Hobart and return Melbourne seasons, replacing Anthony Callea in the role of Johnny Casino, but the 1970s pop icon is no stranger to musicals, as he explains to Neil Litchfield.
John Frost has announced that the international hit musical Dirty Dancing will return to Australia late in 2014, a decade after its World Premiere in Sydney.
"And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.....NOT!” said the 2014 Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s Artistic Director, Kate Ceberano just days before the Festival closed. “I have had the most wonderful three years of my creative life.”
