There is a feature interview with Elouise on the ABC News website.
Former Neighbours star Alan Dale is back in Melbourne for a play, Retrograde, at the Arts Centre.
Far from a one-dimensional villain, Dale’s snivelling, menacing Mr Parks is a worthy adversary reflective of the unctuous nature of show business – as mesmerising in the way he weaponises language as he is caustic and manipulative.
Also, Jason Donovan will be coming back to Melbourne for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Beetlejuice the Musical to Close Early in Brisbane, Cancelling Perth, Adelaide and Sydney Seasons
The production, presented in Australia by Michael Cassel Group and Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, will play its final Australian performance at QPAC’s Lyric Theatre on Sunday 5 July. All performances scheduled from Tuesday 7 July onwards have been cancelled.
Producers have attributed the early closure to the escalating cost of touring a production of this scale around Australia. The show features a sizeable cast, large physical production elements, elaborate costumes, major technical requirements and the logistical demands expected of a Broadway scale musical. Moving that machinery between Australian capital cities has become increasingly difficult to justify in the current touring climate.
The decision also leaves a bittersweet mark on what had otherwise been a high profile Australian outing for the show. With its bold design, dark humour and homegrown musical contribution from Eddie Perfect, BEETLEJUICE THE MUSICAL had been positioned as one of the year’s most distinctive theatrical offerings.
Update
Stephen was on ABC Melbourne breakfast today, talking about his new role.
In a shattering blow for Australian live performance, the Broadway hit musical Waitress has announced it is axing its Sydney shows due to softer than expected ticket sales, just one week after the abrupt cancellation of national dates for Beetlejuice.
Waitress, which starred Rob Mills and Natalie Bassingthwaighte in the title role of the pie-making waitress Jenna, was to have opened in Sydney’s Lyric Theatre on August 1.
The show made history on Broadway with the four top creative spots filled with women and a storyline that embraces feminine power, but the cast was told the devastating news on Sunday that the show will not travel to Sydney at the end of its Melbourne premiere run.
It’s disappointing news for the local theatre industry. We could have a period where there are no large-to-mid budget musicals happening in Sydney. Pretty Woman is coming to Melbourne in July to finish its national tour, while Six returns with a new cast also in Melbourne in July.
Blue dot fever?
Waitress was always going to be polarising. Stunt casting and a dated storyline. Its a hard watch with maybe 2 or 3 known or stand out numbers.
Will be interesting to see what happens with Mrs Doubtfire. I can see it having the same fate.
Meantime I just forked out $350 a seat for The Lion King. So some shows are doing ok!
‘There will be dark theatres’: Producer calls for tax breaks before curtains fall
Australian musical theatre producer John Frost has broken his silence to push for immediate tax breaks to save the industry from collapse.
“Without tax incentives, the industry will shrink and shrink and shrink,” Mr Frost told Sunday Confidential. “The tax breaks need to happen sooner than later. They need to happen now.”
Mr Frost is the Australian producer of Waitress, which opened in Melbourne, but will not tour to Sydney.
(Mr Frost) plans to dust himself off and stage two musicals in Melbourne this summer.
The beloved My Fair Lady, directed by Dame Julie Andrews, will open at the new Ian Potter State Theatre, at the Arts Centre, in November.
And, today, Mr Frost will announce a holiday season run for Broadway hit, Elf The Musical, based on the 2003 film starring Will Ferrell, at Crown Live Melbourne, from November 27.
Elf The Musical goes on sale on July 24.
The current Australian tour of Broadway musical The Lion King will extend to Melbourne from March next year.
Glenn Wheatley was excited when Michael Cassel floated the idea of collaborating on a musical using John Farnham songs. But he had a proviso. “The one thing we can’t do is make it biographical,” Wheatley told Cassel. “John is very private, he wouldn’t want to see his life on stage. So let’s take the music and come up with an original idea for it.” Cassel was happy enough with this. The musical Mamma Mia! had set Abba’s songs to a fictional story, after all, and that had worked out reasonably well. It could be done.
If anyone was looking for a bit of sunshine after the horrors of the pandemic, it was Glenn Wheatley’s widow. “It was beautifully written, it was beautifully sung, but it wasn’t joyous,” she says. “Michael and I went: ‘We need joy.’ ” They went back to the drawing board, asking writers to pitch new ideas for a musical about Farnham using Farnham’s songs.
Jack Yabsley grew up in Coonabarabran, central NSW, and his parents were big Farnham fans. He remembers family road trips when he was a toddler on which the Whispering Jack cassette was on high rotation. It must’ve imprinted on his psyche because, decades later, he was always first on the dance floor at Michael Cassel Group parties when You’re the Voice came on. As an out-and-out fan, he’d pitched various storylines for the Farnham songbook first time around – “a romantic comedy, a sports comedy, a bush community trapped in a tiny community hall trying to cheer each other up” – but at the end of every email he had put a rider: “As a fan, I want to see a biopic. That’s what I would want to see.” When asked to pitch again, this time with a story based on Farnham, he knew the slice of life he wanted to focus on. “Part of the theme of this show is that you can’t do it alone,” he says. He points me to a YouTube video of Farnham singing You’re the Voice at an outdoor concert in Munich in 1987, blond locks flowing, clad in leather pants, 100,000 adoring fans chanting along. “It’s peak rock-star John Farnham – but the only way we get to that John Farnham, where he’s a music god, is with these people who helped rebuild the John of 1981.”