While Australia punches well above its weight when it comes to performers, there have been comparatively few locally written and developed shows that have become successful. This may be changing. Over the past 18 months (since the start of 2022) there have been at least thirteen Australian musicals that been either produced (including presentations of public development showcase readings) or announced.
Not all of these will become successful (realistically, only a few - or fewer - will), but the amount of work in development reaching point where it can be presented to the public (either in showcase or full form) is encouraging.
Australian musicals that have had a showing since 2022 include:
- Moulin Rouge
- Midnight - the Cinderella Musical
- Bananaland
- Bloom
- The Dismissal
- Driftwood
- Rabbits on a Red Planet
- The Lucky Country
- Metropolis
- Show People
- Mount Hopeless
- Work of Art
- Dubbo Championship Wrestling
- The Deb
- Songs of the Unseen
- Wonderfully Terrible Things
- Roller Coaster
- Forgetting Tim Minchin
- The Hero Leaves One Tooth
- The Marvellous Elephant Man
- Villainy
- My Brilliant Career
If you know of more, please chime in.
More details in the posts below.
Note: this post is about musicals written (or otherwise created by) Australians. It is not about international musicals produced in Australia, such as Australian productions of Hamilton, Wicked, Mamma Mia, Into the Woods, The Great Comet etc.
What is an Australian musical anyway?
I’d define an Australian musical as one where the key members of the creative and/or initial producing team are Australians.
This can become a bit of an academic argument. Tim Minchin and Eddie Perfect have written songs for Matilda and Beetlejuice respectively, but I wouldn’t describe these as being Australian shows because the creative impetus for them originated in the UK and US respectively. But maybe I’ll have a different view tomorrow.
An Australian musical is not one where the show is set in Australia or is filled with Australian characters. So the 109-s musical Paris, a show about the Trojan War, would be an Australian musical because the creators, Jon English and David Mackay, are Australian. Similarly, Dusty - The Original Pop Diva, a jukebox musical about the English pop singer Dusty Springfield would be an Australian musical because the book writers and original producers were Australian, and the show premiered in and toured Australia.
King Kong and Moulin Rouge are both interesting case studies. The Broadway production of King Kong featured songs by Eddie Perfect, an Australian. But the director, book writer and score composer were all British. (The 2013 production which premiered in Melbourne had a substantially different creative team, also mostly non-Australians.) So why would I call King Kong an Australian musical? Because the impetus behind the show came from Australian-based production company Global Creatures and its founder Carmen Pavlovic, who is Australian.
Similarly, I would argue Moulin Rouge can be counted as an Australian musical, even though the stage show’s key creative team members - such as book writer John Logan, director Alex Timbers, choreographer Sonya Tayeh and orchestrator Justin Levine - are American and the songs are raided almost entirely from non-Australian acts. However the musical’s creative producer is the same Australian company Global Creatures, and the film on which the show is based was written and directed by Australians, Baz Luhrman and Craig Pearce.
These edge cases aside, it is generally the case that Australian musicals are written by Australians, produced in Australia and feature Australian settings and characters. Historical, iconic events and figures such as the Eureka Rebellion, the Tivoli Circuit, outlaw Ned Kelly, cricketer Shane Warne and rock singer Johnny O’Keefe have all inspired musicals.