The 2016 annual Melbourne Cabaret Festival has enjoyed a successful run this year under the artistic direction of Mike McLeish. We spoke to McLeish a week before the festival opened, chatting about the role of cabaret as an artistic outlet, and how he went about putting the festival together. As the new AD of the… Read more.
It’s Melbourne’s coldest day for the year, so what’s better than some super hot cabaret? Melbourne Cabaret Festival finishes on Sunday 26 June, which means you can still easily see six or nine shows! Over the two week festival director Mike McLeish has shared about 40 of his favourite cabaret artists and shows with Melbourne… Read more.
The most moving part of Georgy Girl –The Seekers musical is a film of the audience watching The Seekers at Melbourne’s Myer Music Bowl in 1967. There were about 200 000 people, around a tenth of the city’s population and still the most people to ever attend a concert in Australia. The film showed young… Read more.
The Australian cast of the brand new production, Georgy Girl – the Seekers Musical, was announced today with members of The Seekers in attendance. The cast announcement was made at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl, the scene of The Seekers’ record-breaking concert in 1967 that drew a crowd of more than 200,000 people. The musical will have… Read more.
This is my first attempt at a group How We Do What We Do! I couldn’t pick between the embarrassment of riches that make up my current colleagues, and so instead, we sat around pre-show and nattered together about training (none of these actors have undertaken formal training), parallel non-actor lives (which would see this… Read more.
Miracle City is the stuff of legends in the Australian musical theatre community. A show that was staged just once at Sydney Theatre Company in 1996, it played to rapturous audiences… and was never seen again. Stories of this amazing musical have persisted, and one of the songs in particular has persisted, popping up in… Read more.
Oh Eddie Perfect! You gorgeous, sexy, magnificent beast. You’re as hot as King Kong and if you had a faction of the resources that developed the magnificent monkey, Shane Warne the Musical could tour Australia for ever – or until Warnie does something else that begged for a new song. The original 2008 version of Shane Warne the… Read more.
… Plus One had me at Hootie & The Blowfish and a navy-blue sleeveless floral wrap top with a subtle frill. Hilariously nostalgic and as zeitgeist capturing as a Facebook Instagram album of mock-polaroids of zeitgeists, its interwoven story of old uni friends in their late 30s, original music and terrific performances makes it like The Big Chill for our… Read more.
There are some performers that you just can’t help but be whisked away in their story and admire their talent, making us proud of the artists working in Australia. Mike McLeish is one such performer. Mostly recognised for his award-winning portrayal of Paul Keating in Keating! The Musical, McLeish has had a tough time since… Read more.
