Playlab Theatre has shared the prestigious David Williamson Prize for 2022. The prize, worth $100,000 in total, is one of the richest theatre awards in the country, which is shared between a playwright and the commissioning and producing Theatre Company.
The award was announced at the 55th Australian Writers’ Guild annual AWGIE awards in Sydney last week.
Black Swan State Theatre Company has announced Artistic Director Kate Champion’s inaugural Season for 2023, celebrating a new artistic era for Western Australia’s state theatre company.
The 2023 Season reflects Kate’s search for ‘stimulating and arresting ways to tell compelling stories, which grip the imagination in ways that excite and provoke.’
Popular Australian musical theatre stars including Lucy Durack (Wicked, Legally Blonde, Shrek), Verity Hunt-Ballard (Mary Poppins, Sweet Charity), Thomas McGuane (Frozen, Jersey Boys), Matt Lee (Mary Poppins, Frozen) and Kristie Nguy will lead the new musical production of Midnight, which is premiering in Melbourne in June 2023 at the Comedy Theatre.
With the Andrew Lloyd Webber / Tim Rice musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat open at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre, the newly reimagined production is having its first staging outside the West End. Featuring a dazzling new Dreamcoat, it stars Euan Fistrovic Doidge as Joseph. Euan spoke to Neil Litchfield.
An all-Australian cast has been announced for the 2023 national tour of rock drama Rolling Thunder Vietnam. The ensemble comprises Brittanie Shipway, Tom Oliver, Christian Charisiou, Jerrod Smith, Imogen Moore and Sam Richardson.
The national tour plays Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Maryborough, Caloundra, Wollongong, Western Sydney, Newcastle, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Bendigo, Frankston and Melbourne.
Hugh Sheridan will star as Jonathan Larson in the off-Broadway musical rock musical tick, tick…BOOM!, the autobiographical musical by the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning composer of Rent, Jonathan Larson, which will play at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre from 1 -12, February 2023 before a limited season at QPAC’s Playhouse in Brisbane from March 1 to 5, and Sydney's Lyric Theatre from April 20 - 23.
Image: Mozart and Constanze. Photographer: Daniel Boud.
Full casting has been announced for the new production of Peter Shaffer’s Tony and Academy Award®-winning Amadeus, which will be staged in the Sydney Opera House’s newly transformed Concert Hall from 27 December, 2022 – 21 January, 2023.
The Walt Disney Company has announced the two performers that have been cast in the lead roles of Belle and the Beast when the new production of Beauty and the Beast makes its Australian premiere at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre in June 2023.
Shubshri Kandiah (Belle) and Brendan Xavier (Beast) will bring the iconic roles to life in this new production from the producers of Frozen, Aladdin, The Lion King and Mary Poppins.
A home-grown comedy The Italians by Danny Ball is on stage at Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre from October 23 until November 6, 2022.
The play’s central character is Joe, who runs a successful business, has a handsome boyfriend and wealthy future in-laws. But after clawing his way out of the working class, his plans take a nasty turn when his estranged cousin quickly visits and exposes an enormous family secret.
