Think of it as Shakespeare for the TikTok generation, The Lovers, courtesy of lyricist Laura Murphy, injects the same type of energy Baz Luhrmann laced his Romeo & Juliet telling with across the Midsummer Night’s Dream narrative, reimagining the classic chaos of the original love story with a serious pop sensibility. The core story itself…
Put on your white glove, dust off your red “Thriller” jacket and get ready to witness a musical production fit only for the King of Pop. Michael Jackson is more than a name, he’s a symbol of creativity, aspiration and resilience: a true superstar who transcended musical and cultural boundaries to unite the world through…
Musicians taking centre stage on Broadway is nothing new. In recent years, artists like David Byrne and Bruce Springsteen have transformed the Broadway stage into long-running residencies. Scripted productions about real and imagined musicians, like MJ The Musical (about the life and music of Michael Jackson) or the play Stereophonic, have been awarded Tony’s, and have…
Anne Frank is a name synonymous with youth, innocence, and heartbreaking tragedy. Her diaries, published after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, detailed her life, and that of her family, hiding in an annex in Amsterdam during World War II. The Diary of a Young Girl, commonly referred to as The Diary…
Inspired by the music of Dolly Parton, Here You Come Again is a new musical that celebrates the country musician in the most unique way. The story centres on a forty-year-old man, Kevin (Dash Kruck), who is caught in a mid-life crisis during the pandemic. For this iteration of Here You Come Again, he is…
When an ensemble of accident-prone actors take on a murder mystery performance, everything that can go wrong… does. But amount of chaos can crush their spirits, as they battle the odds to make it to their final curtain call – by any means necessary. Never has a play gone so wrong, yet felt so right….
The Linden Postcard Show is in its 35th year and this year there will be over 1200 artworks on display available for purchase. The Postcard Show runs from 6th September to 2nd November in the gallery in St Kilda in Melbourne. This is a much loved fixture in the Melbourne Art scene. As part of…
Artistic directors and cofounders of the Adelaide Ballet, Rejane Garcia and Sarah Humeniuk have a vision – to establish a professional ballet company that honours the timeless beauty of the art form, while telling the stories of South Australia. And, in the confines of the Light Room Studio at ILA, Adelaide’s Immersive Light and Art,…
Whilst The Magic Flute has been a staple since W. A. Mozart wrote the music in 1791, this performance of the opera by the State Opera South Australia has been produced with the co-support of Opera Hong Kong, Beijing Music Festival and China National Opera House. This gives it a multicultural feel. In the opera,…
The 39 Steps’ evolution dates back to the novel of the same title by John Buchan, published in 1915, Alfred Hitchcock’s film in 1935, then reimagined on stage in 1996 by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, and then Patrick Barlow in 2005. As eloquently noted by director Damien Ryan, “The stage version winks at the…
SNL alum Pete Davidson is making his way Down Under this September for a compact, four-show standup sprint that is way overdue. He’ll kick things off at Perth’s Riverside Theatre on September 29th, before hitting up Melbourne’s Palais Theatre on September 30th and wrapping it up in Sydney with two shows at the Enmore Theatre…
As part of their ongoing exploration of art and technology, ILA, Australia’s Centre for Immersive Light and Art have enlisted Berlin-based multi-disciplinary art collective flora&faunavisions to create an immersive and interactive experience. The experience, called TIMELIGHT ‘Beyond our ticking world’ allows visitors to interact with a virtual digital canvas to explore themes of time and…
Agatha Christie is a timeless story-teller, weaving intriguing stories about complex characters with dark secrets. With some 66 crime novels, 150 short stories and over 25 plays, she is regarded as the Queen of Crime. Director Robyn Nevin AO has bought And Then There Were None to life with style and humour. The play is set…
Riverside Theatres is currently host to a world-class, spine-tingling production of 1984, an adaptation of George Orwell’s iconic novel by Orson Welles, brought to life by the brilliant Shake & Stir Theatre Co. Even if you’ve never read the book, the themes totalitarian control, surveillance, and the distortion of truth that are so deeply embedded…
It doesn’t need to be the hard knock life. Take a trip down Easy Street with one of Broadway’s brightest sources of love, laughter and happiness. Returning to Australian shores, Annie the Musical has delighted audiences worldwide for nearly 50 years, capturing the hearts of generation after generation. It’s a truly joyous adventure following the…
It may be counterintuitive at a sound, light and music festival to disconnect from your phone for a few hours of quiet time, but it really helps reset the mind. The Offline Club as a concept started in the coffee shops of Amsterdam. It has trended (ironically via Instagram) to places such as Dubai, Berlin,…
Part of the winter school holiday line-up at the Sydney Opera House (see: Kids & Families | Sydney Opera House), The Twits is a staging of the disgusting(!) Roald Dahl book. The people behind the show, Shake and Stir Theatre Productions, really lead the way with children’s theatre (that can be sincerely enjoyed by parents…
For the fifth year in a row, Illuminate Festival has opened in Adelaide to shake off the cold winter chills. The opening night of Night Visions in the leafy Botanic Gardens was an ethereal adventure. Illuminate Adelaide Co-founders and Creative Directors Lee Cumberlidge and Rachael Azzopardi have assembled a team of artists including Chris Petridis,…
If you can believe it, CATS is now over 40 years old. One of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s signature stage musicals (on this rare occasion, without artistic teammate, Tim Rice), CATS has been around the world touring every city imaginable including Paris, London, New York, Athens, Bangkok, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and back now to Australia after tours…
Australia’s leading First Nations performing arts company, Bangarra Dance Theatre, is once again taking to the stage at the Sydney Opera House to present their new work, Illume. After 20 years performing out of the Drama Theatre, Bangarra are making history by bringing their latest work to the main stage in the Joan Sutherland Theatre,…
While Homer’s epic of Odysseus leaving his Ithaca home for ten years to fight for Helen’s honour in the Trojan war is well celebrated, what is not so well documented is the story of his devoted wife Penelope who was left behind. Booker Prize-winning author, Margaret Atwood penned the 2005 novella The Penelopiad, which was…
Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Be… witness to one of the most extravagant and impressive productions to ever hit Australian shores. The hotly anticipated musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s classic film, Beetlejuice, has debuted six feet down-under with Melbourne’s own Eddie Perfect sliding into the titular role for the first time. The musical takes themes of family, love and…
Grab your lyre and take a trip down the Styx to the Underworld… but just remember, don’t look back. Where love, tragedy and Greek mythology combine, Hadestown debuts the timeless love story of Orpheus and Eurydice at Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre. This Tony award-winning production, fuelled by the music and lyrics of Anaïs Mitchell, weaves…
UPU are a collective based in New Zealand who aim to create more opportunities for Pacific performing artists by making contemporary, Pacific centred works for both stage and screen. UPU, meaning ‘word’, in many different languages of the Pacific Islands, brings together the voices of those living among the islands of the Pacific Ocean, also…
The hugely popular comedy streaming service Dropout has just announced plans to tour Australia and New Zealand in 2026 for the Dropout Improv tour. Dropout has quickly become one of the most popular comedy streaming platforms, producing original series that the fans know and love such as Very Important People, Game Changer, and the hugely…
Celebrating its 40th anniversary, CATS, the record-breaking stage musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber, is set to tour Australia from June 2025. Starting its season at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, CATS will then move on to Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide from 20 September and to Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne from 21 December. A Perth…
Aussie Indie Artists is a Q&A series with smaller Aussie creators that shares exciting new works, finds new angles towards the art, and peeks behind the scenes. Faces, and colours, and abstractions, and feelings meld together in Magali Feuga’s work. Somehow, they look both freeform and intricate – it’s a delicate balance, with the weaving…
Australian writers, Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland are unlikely friends. This odd couple met while working together at Mama Mia online and are now co-authors. Their book, Broken Brains is about their unvarnished lived experiences with different forms of brain sickness. The Sydney Opera House was the first stop on the pair’s book tour. It…
Any concerns that the world’s longest-running musical was losing its edge are put to bed in a stunning Sydney gala performance of Les Misérables. Even if musicals aren’t your thing, you’ll know of Les Misérables: it’s been a pop culture icon for as long as most of us can remember. But for Australia’s insatiable theatre…
Aussie Indie Artists is a Q&A series with smaller Aussie creators that shares exciting new works, finds new angles towards the art, and peeks behind the scenes. Fabian Artunduaga’s collages are seamless worlds for you to inhabit, if just for a single dramatic moment. Working under the name HouseCatStudio, the Sydney-based artist layers photography, collage,…
