The Stage Show

The Stage Show with Michael Cathcart has wound up after eight years on air. In this highlights of 2025 episode: Playwright Andrea James researched a story from the 1840s, in which colonial newspapers suggested that a 'white woman' – maybe the survivor of a shipwreck – had been taken captive by Gunaikurnai people in what is now eastern Victoria.  Andrea interrogates the legend in a riveting play ca...

It’s one of those roles which great actors have on their to-do list: Winnie in the play Happy Days by Samuel Beckett.  Winnie starts the play buried up to her waist in dirt. In Act 2 she’s buried up to her neck! Acclaimed actor Pamela Rabe tell us what makes this such an iconic play and how she approached it as both co-director and star of Happy Days for the Sydney Theatre Company in 2025. In the...

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold in the hit folk musical   Hadestown . It's won Tonys, Grammys and is now in Australia. We speak to the singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell, who wrote Hadestown as a concept album, before touring it around in an old bus and then turning it into a remarkable stage show with the Broadway director Rachael Chavkin. First broadcast March 18. Back stage... The make...

More highlights from The Stage Show. We meet Irish screen and theatre actor Stephen Rea, who talks about meeting Samuel Beckett early in his career. Rea so wanted to perform Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, he had the foresight to record his youthful self reading it. In his  production at Adelaide Festival , the audience got to hear those recordings. We head Back Stage to the hat maker's studio!...

In 2025 Australian theatre legend Robyn Nevin directed And Then There Were None , a classic murder mystery by Agatha Christie. She talks to Michael about the darkness in Christie's stories, her view on changing acting styles and how Robyn finds her 'inner clown'. Playwright Patricia Cornelius explains why she had five actors playing the world's most famous hacker — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange...

Michael Cathcart and the team farewell you from The Stage Show. In front of a studio audience, Michael interviews the remarkable Denise Scott, who's about to tour her new comedy show ; songstress Bernadette Robinson (with pianist Mark Jones) gives us a taste of the grand dames who sang at Carnegie Hall . Theatre director and actor Rachael Maza reflects on her 18 years at the helm of the groundbrea...

For 25 years Michael Cathcart has been presenting arts and culture shows on Radio National, bringing listeners stories and conversations with writers, performers, musicians, poets and playwrights, from across Australia and the world. On our second-final ever Stage Show, Michael revisits some of his most memorable interviews. From authors Salman Rushdie and Esther Freud, to playing the organ at the...

Cabaret star Meow Meow interprets Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales in inimitable style. Returning with her brilliant show The Red Shoes , about a girl possessed by a pair of vivid red shoes that won't stop dancing. Meow Meow explains why the story resonated with Andersen and discusses some of her favourite female performers from the era of the Weimar republic. The Glass Menagerie is perhaps o...

On this episode it’s all about Shakespeare. A comedy. A tragedy. And a tale of utter savagery. The many moods of William Shakespeare – starting in a happy place with actors Alison Bell and Faysal Bazzi, and Shakespeare specialist Mark Wilson, who directs them in a tale of love and mischief – Much Ado About Nothing at the Melbourne Theatre Company. Original music excerpted is by composer and sound...

Danielle de Niese started life in suburban Melbourne, appearing on Young Talent Time at the age of nine before pursuing singing in the US. She is now a star soprano, performing many of opera's most famous roles and married into a famous opera-loving family — with  their own opera house! She's back in Australia to perform the character Opera Australia are billing as “the most dangerous women in ope...

Why would two actors,  who are married in real life, pretend to eviscerate each other night after night in the emotionally brutal play Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf ? Kat Stewart and David Whitely first performed this Edward Albee classic on the small, indy stage of Melbourne's Red Stitch Theatre and it was a hit. Now it's being remounted by Sydney Theatre Company. Composer, musician and director...

The new musical Tivoli Lovely  is Eddie Perfect’s return to the grand days of what was known across Australia as the Tivoli Theatre circuit. He's written it especially for second and third year music theatre students at WAAPA, his alma mater. He joins Michael along with director Dean Bryant, who's made a string of entertaining shows as a director and writer, including writing the lyrics for  the 2...

Bernadette Peters is the Tony award winning actress who has reigned on Broadway for decades. She is famous for originating roles in Stephen Sondheim musicals -- like the witch in Into The Woods and she's coming to Brisbane for the Melt Festival of Queer arts and culture. The Shiralee is the story of the tough, itinerant labourer Macauley and his equally tough young daughter Buster, who loves him f...

Rebecca  is a 1938 gothic suspense story by Daphne Du Maurier that's never been out of print. It's also a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock. Now it's a play starring Nikki Shiels as the unnamed Young Woman and Pamela Rabe, in the iconic role of Mrs Danvers. How does this story of dark infatuation translate to the stage, and how does Melbourne Theatre Company treat its complicated romance? Phar Lap...

In 1986, Filipinos launched a peaceful revolution to overthrow their president, Ferdinand Marcos. In the new play Malacañang Made Us , these events live on in the memories of two brothers who were in the crowd that flooded the palace. Jordan Shea is the playwright behind this show, which won the Qld Premier’s Drama Award – and which is about to open at Queensland Theatre. The Village Square is an...

The Stage Show is back from sabbatical! On this episode, star playwright Suzie Miller speaks to Michael about Inter Alia , her gripping new play that takes you into the mind of a feminist judge, who’s also a mother, forced to confront a terrible reality. It’s just wound up a big season at London’s National Theatre, starring Rosamund Pike . Lisa Pellegrino is part of a family that migrated from Ita...

Your guide to what's happening on stages across the country and beyond.

Pianist Keith Jarrett is one of the most captivating and controversial musicians of the last 50 years. He's a rare breed - a musician who has mastered the art of jazz improvisation and a fine classical player too.  It’s been 50 years since the Köln Concert, which became the best-selling piano and solo jazz album of all time. But as we find out, that concert nearly didn't happen! You’ll hear all th...

Much like Duke Ellington before him, Charles Mingus' output was prolific. Over his near four-decade career, Mingus was behind a number of jazz firsts: he composed and recorded arguably the first jazz ballet - labelling his iconic LP 'The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady' as "ethnic folk-dance music." He also brought together elements of swing, bebop and R&B in ways that had never been heard bef...

This week we're honouring the late, great Billie Holiday. From her early ascendancy as a weaver of song in the 30s to her outspoken truth telling with records like 'Strange Fruit' to her downfall and decline in the 1950s, her tale is one of the more captivating in jazz. Across this episode, we recount Billie's life, and you'll hear from Lady Day herself from various archival interviews.

If you were to put together a list of jazz’s most influential names, then it’d be hard to look past Quincy Jones’s contributions. He was a giant of the music industry, with an influence that spanned from the bop era right up to modern music today. 

In the '70s, Joni Mitchell looked to jazz to inform her creative style. She would collaborate with many of the genre's leaders, but as we'll discover, jazz also was key in her formation right from the start. This episode was presented by bass player and ABC Jazz host, Eric Ajaye , and written and produced by ABC Jazz producer Henry Rasmussen . It was created by ABC Jazz and originally broadcast on...

With over 70 years of playing jazz under his belt, Sonny Rollins has seen a thing or two. He was present at so many turning points in the music: from bebop to modal jazz, post bop to fusion... and beyond. Now days at the age of 93, Sonny Rollins is one of the last of his generation and a true elder statesman. His contribution to music in both the 20th and 21st centuries is immense, and to this day...

The name Nina Simone can mean many things to many people. Casual fans of her music will no doubt remember her hits like 'I Loves You Porgy', or 'My Baby Just Cares For Me'. For others, though, Nina Simone was one of the most defiant and outspoken performers in the jazz field for much of her career. After an initial rise to fame in the 1950s, Nina started to use her music as a form of protest in th...

We continue our journey into the life and work of Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist of some of the most well-regarded musical theatre ever made. We are joined by performer Philip Quast, authors Joanne Gordon and Robert L McLaughlin, directors of several Sondheim productions Dean Bryant and Sonya Suares, and we speak with the New York Times' chief theatre critic Jesse Green about Here We...