UPDATE: Strictly Ballroom The Musical now to open in March 2014 - link to more details
Global Creatures today (February 8, 2013) officially confirmed the news we reported here earlier this week, that STRICTLY BALLROOM, the company's stage version of the much-loved 1992 Australian film, will move its opening date at the Sydney Lyric to early 2014.
Funny and poignant, Harvey Fierstein’s intensely personal collection of three plays chronicles a Jewish New York drag-queen’s quest for love, respect and a life of which he can be proud. From a failed affair with a reluctant lover, to a burgeoning relationship with a young fashion model, Arnold Beckoff’s greatest torment in life remains his turbulent relationship with his mother.
What is the future of live theatre? Doomsayers will tell you there is no future, and perhaps the early closing of several mainstage productions, and even theatre companies themselves, last year would add weight to that argument. But there are always entrepreneurial cock-eyed optimists willing to buck the trend and put themselves on the line and we, as theatregoers, are all the better for it.
There’s a child inside all of us, no matter how grown up we may pretend to be. One can only wonder how Ian Fleming, creator of the great James Bond, found his inner child to write Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – one of the world’s best loved children’s stories and films. Now it’s a musical and, after a successful run in Sydney, it has its official opening tomorrow night (Saturday February 2nd) in Melbourne at the theatre we lovingly call “The Maj”.
Australian performer Jamie Ward took over the role of Marius in the musical Les Misérables on January 28 at Queen's Theatre in London’s West End. He will play the role in the long running hit, his first on a West End stage, until mid-June, 2013.
Ward, a WAPPA graduate from Perth, has previously been seen in Australia in the musicals Spring Awakening (Hanschen) for the Sydney Theatre Company and Dr Zhivago (Young Yurii Zhivago) for the Gordon Frost Organisation.
Leading Australian theatre producer John Frost and London theatre impresario David Ian today (January 22, 2013) announced that the ever popular musical GREASE will return to Australian stages later this year. Auditions will commence shortly for this new multi-million dollar production, and tour details will be announced in coming months.
It’s becoming a growth industry. No longer is one festival a year for enough for Australia’s major cities. Now Cabaret, Fringe, Comedy and even festivals of light are cramming the diary. Is the feast for audiences good for local artists? David Spicer speaks with the Directors of the Sydney, Perth and Adelaide Festivals.
The Australian Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows has returned for another season in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, where the show has been entertaining Melburnians for over a quarter of a century. The show is also playing at Sydney’s Botanic Gardens.
Belvoir dominated the mainstage awards at the 2012 Sydney Theatre Awards, presented tonight (January 14, 2013) at a star-studded ceremony attended by more than 300 members of the Sydney theatre community in the auditorium at Paddington RSL.
The awards, celebrating the best of Sydney theatre throughout 2012, featured Star Guest Presenters Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones, currently in Sydney rehearsing for Driving Miss Daisy.
In 1998, alone in Las Vegas, I saw Cirque de Soleil for the first time, and began a love affair with its magic which will culminate (for now) with the Melbourne Premiere of OVO this coming Thursday. In the years between I have seen 8 different shows in four different countries, bought five soundtracks, eleven masks, celebrated my engagement, and taken as many friends and relatives as I could possibly gather. I am a member of the Cirque de Soleil Club and unashamedly hooked. Why? Well….because……
