The Stage Show

Stephen Sondheim is the composer and lyricist of some of the most well-regarded musical theatre ever made. We delve into his life, work and impact on the form. We hear archival interviews with Sondheim himself and are joined by performer Philip Quast, author Joanne Gordon (Art Isn't Easy: The Theatre of Stephen Sondheim), director of several Sondheim productions, Dean Bryant, and Sonya Suares, fou...

Choreographer Stephanie Lake  and composer Robin Fox are partners in work and life, though they come from 'different worlds' artistically.  Their latest collaboration is the joyful The Chronicles , which follows the rhythms of a life cycle, from birth to death — or is it renewal? Eddie Perfect's Broadway musical Beetlejuice  has received rave reviews for its re-interpretation of Tim Burton's class...

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 the play POV...

What does it take to write a Tony-winning musical? Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are the friends and songwriting team behind big Broadway musicals like Ragtime and  Anastasia . They're also voting members for New York City's famous theatre industry prize, the Tony Awards. They join us as Tony Awards season takes off. Back stage... The make up artist. Meet the veteran head of WHAM (that's wardro...

Legendary French singer Edith Piaf was a firecracker of emotion. Gutsy and seductive, while underneath -- an intense fragility. That’s the legend. But what’s it like to play a legend, show after show, year after year? Cabaret singer Nathalie Lermitte has been inhabiting the icon Piaf for well over a decade. Top Shelf with Josh Piterman.  Josh Piterman  is an Australian musical theatre star who’s u...

When Cree-Salteaux theatre-maker Margo Kane  started trying out for theatre gigs in Canada in the 1970s, there were so few roles for Indigenous actors, she ended up auditioning for the same part more than once. That all changed when she wrote her own one woman show, Moonlodge that became a classic of Canadian theatre. She's in Australia to show her new one-woman show , and reflect on her career. W...

Playwright Andrea James has 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 new play called The Black Woman of Gippsland . In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two gruelling years in Reading...

S. Shakthidharan's last play Counting and Cracking was a massive hit, an epic tale of one Sri Lankan Tamil family and their involvement in world-change events. Now he returns with The Wrong Gods , a story about a mother and daughter in India whose lives are about to be ripped apart by industrial agriculture. Should economic growth come at the cost of a sustainable and ancient way of life? Shakthi...

We mark the 100th Birthday of Australia's oldest continuously run theatre — Brisbane's iconic La Boite . A little theatre that's had a huge influence on the theatre and politics of Brisbane and on building a theatre culture which is distinctively Australian. La Boite's Artistic Director Courtney Stewart and former AD David Berthold (current director-in-residence at NIDA) take us through the eras,...

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has taken over the city. Comedians from across Australia and around the world are here including the UK's Nicola And Rosie Dempsey, as dead-pan singing sisters Flo and Joan . This year they're also presenting One Man Musical – a musical take-down of Andrew Lloyd Webber! Producer Rosa Ellen hits the streets and meets three comedians debuting shows at MICF...

John Harding, a founder of Ilbijerri Theatre Company and veteran playwright, recorded 20 hours of Taungurung elder Uncle Larry Walsh recounting his life story. The result is Lazarus , a sold-out theatre show telling a life of tragic beginnings as a stolen child, survival in institutions and fearless activism. We also hear Billy McPherson, playing Larry. Lazarus is on as part of Melbourne /Naarm's...

Comedian and writer Ruby Wax  tells Michael about how she recently found herself in a mental health clinic, after searching for transformative experiences (like swimming with whales). So what drives her to go public about her experiences, and stay funny? Two thousand years ago and the Roman poet Ovid has been banished to live out his days among uncivilised people on the Black Sea ... The plot of A...

This episode of The Stage Show is about love that doesn't end well! The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold in a hit folk musical called 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 dir...

Actor, director and writer  Leah Purcell  has been telling us her own stories and the stories of people close to her since the 1990s. Now Leah’s back – as the adaptor and director of the true tale of Aunty Ruth Hegarty, which take us into the heart of Australia’s post-colonial history, a powerful two-person play called  Is that you, Ruthie? The life of a performer on the road can be tough, but thi...

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 new production at Adelaide Festival , the audience gets to hear those recordings. We head Back Stage to the hat maker's studio! In fiction there are lots of char...

Shortly before he died, Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto performed a piano concert called Kagami – which was filmed and recorded with mixed reality technology. Thanks to that, the audience can see and hear Sakamoto play on a level of reality which pushes the boundaries of what a concert can be. Todd Eckert was a friend of Sakamoto and through his company Tin Drum, is pioneering this tech for the...

As a teenager in Belgium, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui  grew up dancing with his friends in the street. He’s now a renowned choreographer with his own company and the director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, choreographing everything from pop music videos to the new show MANIFEST at Perth Festival - where members of the public can train alongside his dancers for a performance in the city’s Forre...

Australian theatre legend Robyn Nevin is directing 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 has five actors playing the world's most famous hacker — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in...

UK director Emma Rice thinks the classic novel Wuthering Heights has many contemporary resonances, particularly around the origins of the character Heathcliff.  Rice turned the story into a rollicking play after successfully adapting other English folktales and films for the stage. She tells us about her career, which included briefly leading Shakespeare's Globe theatre before founding her own com...

The Hindu epic Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world, a tale where gods and mortals dance around each other in stories about creation, sex, death and destruction. But can it be told in under nine hours? That was the duration of  Peter Brooks’ famous 1988 production of The Mahabharata at the Adelaide Festival. Miriam Fernandes and Ravi Jain, from Canada’s Why Not Theatre, have wrestled the s...

When director and actor  Ian Michael first saw the stage play of Picnic at Hanging Rock, adapted by playwright Tom Wright, it was as a theatre attendant. Now, he is directing it at the Opera House for the Sydney Theatre Company . The Noongar theatre-maker has forged an exciting career performing deeply personal stories alongside innovative productions. His production of the gothic story of the Vic...

Over the past 200 years, theatre has often been a lightning rod for social and political upheaval in the United States. Even the plays of William Shakespeare have been the subject of violent debate. This surprising history is examined in two recent books by James Shapiro: Shakespeare in a Divided America and The Playbook. Also, we explore Bangarra Dance Theatre's first mainstage cross-cultural col...

Death is not a very funny subject. Yet, comedian, writer and musician Eric Idle has spent 60 years showing us the funny side of our all-too-fleeting lives. The Monty Python member has toured Australia with his show Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! He's also written a book about the creation of his musical, Spamalot. Also, we visit Australia's Back to Back Theatre, which has been delig...

In the desert town of Papunya in 1981, four blackfellas and a whitefella bonded over rock 'n' roll and became the history-making Warumpi Band. The Warumpis were the first rock band to sing in Aboriginal languages. Big Name, No Blankets from Ilbijerri Theatre Company tells their story on stage. Also, Australian writer James Elazzi has garnered acclaim for his frank and funny plays that dramatise th...

It's been 100 years since the death of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini. From La Bohème to Turandot, Puccini's operas remain some of the most popular around the world. To explore Puccini's life and legacy, we're joined by musicologist Dr Linda Fairtile and hear performances from two Opera Australia productions. Also, since Hamilton debuted in Australia in 2021, the American founding fath...