The Stage Show

The Australian playwright Ray Lawler has died at the age of 103. Lawler wrote Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, which spurred a growing movement of artists telling Australian stories in Australian voices on the mainstage. To pay tribute to Ray Lawler, we're joined by theatre legends Robyn Nevin and Neil Armfield and we hear interviews with Ray from the ABC archives. Also, the musical Wicked will soo...

Since Hamilton debuted in Australia in 2021, the American founding father has been played by the South African-born, Perth-raised performer Jason Arrow. He's now been in the role for longer than the show's writer and original star, Lin-Manuel Miranda. After being selected to lead the international tour to New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, Jason is back where hi...

Australian writer James Elazzi has garnered acclaim for his frank and funny plays that dramatise the lives of Lebanese Australians. He has been nominated for a slew of awards in his young career, including this year's Martin-Lysicrates Prize. His sixth play, Karim, is coming to Riverside's National Theatre of Parramatta. Also, a city-wide lockdown indefinitely confines two people on a blind date f...

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 upcoming Opera Australia productions. Also, over their 20-year history, Brisbane's contemporary circus com...

For NAIDOC Week, guest host Wesley Enoch is joined by First Nations performers, playwrights and programmers who "Keep the Fire Burning" on stages right across the country. Ian Michael and Rachael Maza discuss the First Nations theatrical canon and whether classic texts like Jane Harrison's Stolen should be staged more often, we find out what it's like for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peop...

Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's most popular plays, so why would anyone write a new version? Zinnie Harris is the writer of Macbeth (An Undoing), which is coming to the Malthouse Theatre. It fleshes out the story of one of the theatre's most notorious villains: Lady Macbeth. Also, The Woman in Black is a chilling ghost story that takes us to a lonely house beyond the marshes, where, as nig...

Dan Daw rose to prominence as a dancer who makes his distinctive body the centre of his work. Now, he takes to the stage as an actor, in a bold and witty play that was a Broadway hit. Cost of Living is about the complex relationships between those living with disability and their carers. But it also wrestles with other, sometimes overlooked, factors that impact one's quality of life. Dan is co-dir...

Pull up a chair to your lamp-lit table and enjoy cabaret performances from some of Australia's finest musical talent. Gathered around the piano at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, we're joined by artistic director Virginia Gay, musical theatre luminaries Swing on This (Luke Kennedy, Matt Lee, Ben Mingay and Bert LaBonté), performer and late-night salon host Victoria Falconer, musical improv troupe M...

S. Shakthidharan's award-winning epic, Counting and Cracking, won seven Helpmann Awards and drew a huge audience to a story that many of them knew little about. Five years after its world premiere, Counting and Cracking is on in Melbourne as part of the RISING festival, after which it transfers to Sydney's Carriageworks and then New York. In 1972, a lecturer at the University of Adelaide was attac...

Former prime minister Paul Keating was one of the great parliamentary performers. His ruthless wit and self-confidence takes centre stage in Jonathan Biggins' hugely popular tribute to Keating, The Gospel According to Paul. The upcoming season at the Sydney Opera House may be Jonathan's final outing as the boy from Bankstown. Also, with her new show Gurr Era Op coming to RISING, Torres Strait Isla...

Perhaps no dance company has done more to expand the horizons of Australian audiences than Bangarra Dance Theatre. Now they expand those horizons further, presenting their first mainstage cross-cultural collaboration. Horizon includes work choreographed by Deborah Brown, a descendent of the Wakaid Clan and Meriam people in the Torres Strait, with Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, of the Māori Ngāti Tūwh...

A childhood love of dance and a challenging homelife drove Rafael Bonachela to leave his native Spain at just 17 years old and seek his fortune in the dance studios and theatres of London. The celebrated choreographer was then beckoned to Australia, where he has led the Sydney Dance Company since 2009. Also, in The Audition, we meet a group of asylum seekers vying for a new life in Australia. The...

For decades, Australia's Back to Back Theatre has been delighting audiences with shows performed and devised by an ensemble of artists who are neurodivergent or living with a disability. Following their most recent major international award win, we visit the ensemble at their Geelong headquarters as they rehearse their new show: Multiple Bad Things. Also, alongside the stand-up, improv and cabaret...

It's Tony season on Broadway and this week we have two major figures of American theatre who have won nine Tony Awards between them: Audra McDonald and Jason Robert Brown. Performer Audra McDonald is currently on a concert tour of Australia. Her first Tony Award came for her breakthrough role in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel and she's added five more Tonys to her collection since then. And...

Simon Burke is one of Australia's most cherished entertainers. 2024 marks his 50th year performing on stage. He made his professional stage debut at just 12 years old and shortly after won an AFI Award for his performance in Fred Schepisi's film The Devil's Playground. He's since become renowned as a musical theatre performer, having had major roles in Australia and on London's West End. Right now...

Suzanne Chaundy is one of Australia's most in-demand directors of opera. Last year, she had the triumph of a lifetime with her direction of opera's most daunting challenge: Wagner's Ring Cycle. Now she's back with another big opera, Lucia di Lammermoor at the Melbourne Opera. So, what does it take to direct an opera? Also, in Lose to Win, which opens soon at Belvoir Street Theatre, Mandela Mathia...

Choreographer Johan Inger's first narrative work is a radically contemporary take on Carmen, which employs Bizet's famous score but draws on the confronting violence of Mérimée's original novella for its story. The ballet earned the Prix Benois de la Danse and is now being presented by The Australian Ballet. Also, Victor Hugo's novel about an orphaned boy whose mouth has been cut into a perpetual...

Angus Cerini has been writing plays for 25 years, but his recent experiences as a farmer have inspired his latest play, Into the Shimmering World. The acclaimed writer of The Bleeding Tree and Wonnangatta now introduces us to two aging farmers, played by Kerry Armstrong and Colin Friels, struggling against relentless adversity. Also, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt is a published collection of poems writ...

Opera Australia's annual production on Sydney Harbour is a highlight of the performing arts calendar. This year, the floating stage hosts West Side Story and it stars First Nations soprano Nina Korbe. The musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim is Nina's professional debut, but not her first time performing in a spectacular outdoor setting. Also, with the 2024 Melbourne International Com...

A Case for the Existence of God is by the American playwright Samuel D. Hunter. It is a two-hander that explores the unlikely connections between two men unalike in class, race and sexuality. Samuel is also the creator of the very unsettling hit play The Whale, a film adaption of which earned two Academy Awards. Two separate productions of A Case for the Existence of God are being presented in Apr...

In her memoir Oh Miriam!, the British-Australian actress, writer and comedian Miriam Margolyes shares hugely entertaining stories from her life with her trademark wit and disarming candour. Now, she's bringing those stories — and more — to the stage. Also, 37 is a new play from the funny and vernacular Palawa/Pakana playwright, Nathan Maynard. In the era of AFL footballer Adam Goodes' famous war c...

The acclaimed Irish actor Andrew Scott tackles his most challenging stage role yet in a one-man retelling of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. The production, Vanya, was commissioned and directed by Sam Yates, a young British director who was mentored by the likes of Trevor Nunn, Nicholas Hytner and Phyllida Lloyd.  Also, opening nights can be stressful under any circumstances, but what do you do when...

At the 2024 Adelaide Festival, we visit theatre foyers, dressing rooms and the city's famous gardens to meet the artists bringing theatregoers to the edge of their seats. We speak with artistic director Ruth Mackenzie, who is delivering her first full program this year, we meet acclaimed choreographer Elizabeth Streb, whose 'Action Hero' performers in Streb Extreme Action will push their bodies to...

One of the headline events at this year's Adelaide Festival is an enchanting production of Stravinsky's opera The Nightingale. It comes from the playful imagination of Robert Lepage. Lepage is an acclaimed French-Canadian writer, director and performer who, during his decades-long career, has reshaped our ideas of what theatre can be. Also, we hear a scene from Monument by Emily Sheehan, a new Aus...

British visual artist Es Devlin has designed spectacular sets for some of the largest stages on earth. As well as designing for the theatre, Es has created unique performance spaces for the likes of Beyoncé and U2. Now, her award-winning stage design for The Lehman Trilogy, about the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers investment bank, can be seen on stage in Sydney. Also, Pip Williams' bestselli...