Hamilton, Harry Potter and Moulin Rouge! Musical theatre returns
Australia’s musical theatre is booming and seeking to make up for time lost in the pandemic.
A couple of months ago, the irrepressible American producer Jeffrey Seller bounded onto the stage of Melbourne’s Regent Theatre and stood amid the Australian cast of Hamilton to give one of his customary rousing speeches.
“How lucky are we to be alive right now?” he exclaimed to the whooping opening-night crowd, riffing on one of the show’s tunes. “How lucky are we to have gone through the eye of the storm and expressed our resilience and our perseverance and courage so we could come together in these rooms again? How lucky are we to be standing in the only city in the world outside London and New York where a theatregoer can see the three hottest shows on stage today – Moulin Rouge!, Harry Potter and Hamilton?”
How lucky indeed. It’s a far cry from this time last year, when much of the country was in or was about to go back into another Covid-induced lockdown, forcing yet another closure or postponement of several live shows. Hamilton would have to cancel a whopping 150 Sydney shows, reopening briefly in October only to shut again over Christmas when the new variant emerged. The Australian premiere of Moulin Rouge! was continually postponed for more than three months, its cast and crew holed up in hotels and homes across Melbourne as they waited anxiously for word on when the lockdown might lift. Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella announced its Australian debut with great fanfare last November, only to join the steady stream of shows with no option but to postpone.
Fast forward 12 months and it’s a vastly changed landscape. Audiences are spoilt for choice, with Hamilton, Cinderella and Hairspray in Melbourne to Moulin Rouge!, Mary Poppins, Bonnie & Clyde and Fangirls in Sydney, Rella and Frozen the Musical in Adelaide and 9 to 5 the Musical in Brisbane.
“We’re about to enter a really buoyant time,” says Michael Cassel, the lead producer on the Australian production of Hamilton and a co-producer of Mary Poppins.
“Obviously there’s confidence in all these shows from the venues and producers, but that can only be supported if there’s an audience. From a sales perspective it feels like we’re settling into a new groove … people are getting on with life and obviously wanting to go out and have that live theatre experience.”
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Nevertheless the ramifications of the pandemic continue to be felt. While the federal government’s JobKeeper and RISE grants were a saviour for many, there were plenty within the live performance industries not eligible to apply, given the freelance nature of the work. “We lost a lot of people who were forced to go into other industries,” Cassel says. “There’s a severe shortage, and it’s not just on stage; it’s backstage crew, technicians, sound staff, hair and make-up, publicists, production accountants and everybody else it takes to support the ecosystem. We need to be investing more in bringing new talent through the ranks if we want to grow the industry.”
Speaking from Chicago after the opening night of the North American tour of Moulin Rouge!, co-producer Carmen Pavlovic adds that the government needs to step in and support smaller, not-for-profit theatre companies. “They are such an important breeding ground for developing the talent pools that move out into the commercial sector,” she says. “They also need increased financial support so they can comfortably vary their programming between risk-taking and audience-pleasing work. These are the things that help foster a healthy and vibrant ecosystem. Opera Australia took such a creative risk on Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin when they were young and straight out of NIDA. Would that happen today with the financial strain these companies are under? It’s hard to imagine.”
‘People are getting on with life and wanting to have that live theatre experience’
Australian audiences have certainly proved to have adventurous tastes. While the big Broadway shows are perennially popular, small indie shows nurtured locally also sell well and regularly catch the eye of commercial producers for development and restaging in larger venues. Yve Blake’s infectious teen musical Fangirls, developed at Belvoir and now being restaged for the Sydney Opera House is a case in point, while several shows developed at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre, including In the Heights, Sweet Charity and Heathers, have done likewise. The upcoming Dubbo Championship Wrestling is another the Hayes hopes will go far.
“If you have a well-funded, functioning, diverse ecosystem, you’re going to be finding new stories to share alongside beloved revivals or successful shows from the West End or Broadway, and that’s what we need to strive for, that balance where we’re giving opportunities to new voices, new creatives, new storytellers,” says Cassel.
“But these things take time [and] when there’s such limited infrastructure that does make it challenging to [create] new work. It needs nurturing, and it’s hard to do that on the scale of the mainstage when competing against big international hits, so that’s where we need to invest. Places like the Hayes finds shows they can create innovatively, without compromising storytelling [then often] transfer to larger venues and tour, and that’s really important.”
Take Muriel’s Wedding the Musical. Devised by the Sydney Theatre Company and Pavlovic’s live entertainment company Global Creatures for a 2017 season, it was reworked for a second season two years later and is now headed to New York for a six-week workshop in August. “We developed Muriel’s Wedding in Australia with a fully Australian creative team,” says Pavlovic. “The creation of new theatrical work [like this] needs action at every level of the ecosystem, from improving access for young people to fully realised tertiary education programs, to the government understanding the desperate need for financial support.”
Pavlovic believes local commercial theatres should be obliged as part of their operating licences to schedule Australian content. “It was extremely challenging for Muriel’s Wedding to get a run of dates in commercial theatres. We could have developed the show years earlier if we weren’t having to compete for dates theatre owners preferred to give to proven hits from the West End and Broadway. Our experience trying to get a theatre for Muriel’s Wedding was a key factor in us deciding to premiere Moulin Rouge! The Musical internationally.”
She also urges the government to develop a tax incentive to attract investment in new work in Australia, a mechanism that has proven hugely successful in the local screen industry. “The UK has a scheme for cash rebates for the cost of developing new theatrical work and the US has generous tax breaks for investors in new work as well. We have nothing of the sort for theatre in Australia and I believe it is the single biggest idea that could really move the needle.”
There are also ongoing calls for more large theatres in Sydney. While the 1100-seat Theatre Royal recently reopened with Jagged Little Pill and An American in Paris, Cassel says more commercial-sized theatres are needed to speed up the number of shows in the market and create a truly vibrant industry. “There’s absolutely no reason Sydney can’t sustain the same number of theatres Melbourne has – Sydney has a bigger population and all shows do incredibly well here, Hamilton being a recent case in point for us. The constant producer gripe is ‘we need more’!”
Certainly the next couple of months show no signs of slowing down. “We have a market here where all our theatres can be occupied, the business buoyant and shows not cannibalise each other. That’s what a sophisticated market can do,” says Cassel. “If we were being impacted in 2021, then brace yourselves for 2022. We’ve got lost time to make up for!”
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WHAT’S ON
MELBOURNE:
Hamilton
Her Majesty’s Theatre, booking through to October 2
Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella
Regent Theatre from May 20 then touring Brisbane and Sydney
Hairspray
Regent Theatre from August 7
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Premieres at Regent Theatre in November
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SYDNEY:
Moulin Rouge! The Musical
Capitol Theatre from May 28
Bonnie & Clyde
Opening at the Hayes Theatre Co from June 17
Mary Poppins, Sydney Lyric Theatre
Booking through to July 17
Phantom of the Opera
Sydney Opera House from August 19
Dubbo Championship Wrestling
at the Hayes Theatre Co until June 11 then touring Parramatta Riverside from June 16
Fangirls, Belvoir and Queensland Theatre in association with ATYP
Sydney Opera House from July 28
Jekyll and Hyde
The Hayes Theatre Co, from July 29
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ADELAIDE:
Rella
Windmill Theatre Company until June 4, Dunstan Playhouse
Frozen The Musical
Adelaide Festival Centre from May 26
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BRISBANE:
9 To 5 The Musical
Queensland Performing Arts Centre from May 22; Melbourne from July 10
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WOLLONGONG:
Friends! The Musical Parody
Until May 28, then touring Parramatta, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne
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PERTH:
Once the Musical
Opens at Black Swan State Theatre Company May 28