News

Musicals: The Shocks Of The New

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.”

New Melbourne Production for Sondheim Musical PASSION

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.

Mike’s “Light On The Hill”

About to open with his brand new show Message to My Girls as part of the Melbourne Cabaret Festival, Mike McLeish talks to Coral Drouyn.

Lunch with Richard O’Brien

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 Grease

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.

Dirty Dancing Returns

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.

The New Score Closes 2014 Adelaide Cabaret Festival

"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.”

5 Years of Gender-Bending Broadway

Twisted Broadway charity concert returns to Melbourne on Monday 4 August, 2014.

Celebrating five fabulous years, the gender-bending music theatre charity blockbuster Twisted Broadway returns to Melbourne for one-night-only at Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse on Monday 4 August, 2014! Having enjoyed sell-out concerts in previous years,Twisted Broadway features internationally-acclaimed music theatre talent singing songs originally penned for the opposite gender in a one-off night of show-stopping entertainment.

Ruthless! The Musical

Season Extended to July 12 due to popular demand.

When satirical all female Off-Broadway musical Ruthless! – a razor sharp send-up of theatrical ambition and the entertainment business – has its Sydney Premiere on June 20, it will be the culmination of a 16 year dream for co-stars and co -producers Meredith O’Reilly and Katrina Retallick. They spoke to Neil Litchfield.

Adelaide Premiere for Ettie’s Boys

Publishing and performance coincide to launch WW1 play

When one thinks about the many pioneering women of the early twentieth century, names such as suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and aviator Amelia Earhart come to mind. When Ettie’s Boys plays at Adelaide’s Holden Street Theatres in July 2014 theatregoers will learn about another female pioneer, a trailblazer for sex education and sexual health, Ettie Rout.

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