2023 Onstage: Five Big Theatre Hits Playing Brisbane, Plus Five Blockbusters to See Interstate
From 'Moulin Rouge!' to a world-premiering new Elvis musical, these are the huge stage shows you need to see this year.
2023 Onstage: Five Big Theatre Hits Playing Brisbane, Plus Five Blockbusters to See Interstate
From 'Moulin Rouge!' to a world-premiering new Elvis musical, these are the huge stage shows you need to see this year.
If you live your life one stage phenomenon at a time, then 2023 is an excellent year to reside in Brisbane. Already, the biggest musical of the 21st century has finally hit the River City. Soon, it'll be followed by a spectacular spectacular romance that's set in Paris but sports strong Australian links.
You'd best pick out your favourite seats in QPAC's various spaces — thanks to this year's blockbuster theatre hits, they're about to get a workout. Or, you could look forward to a circus stunner on ice at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
Fancy travelling further afield to check out some of 2023's massive onstage productions? Australia's theatre scene is revelling in everything from reworked Shakespeare to tales as old as time, plus tributes to not one but two iconic music stars.
From the stacked calendar of stage shows hitting the country this year, we've picked five absolute must-see highlights to see here in Brisbane — and five to add to your interstate plans as well.
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Brisbanites, it’s finally your chance to sit in the room where it happens — because Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s game-changing, award-winning, rightly raved-about Hamilton is here. Now playing QPAC until Sunday, April 23, the Broadway blockbuster boasts an Australian cast that includes Jason Arrow as Alexander Hamilton, Martha Berhane as Eliza Hamilton, Callan Purcell as Aaron Burr, Akina Edmonds as Angelica Schuyler, Matu Ngaropo as George Washington, and Victory Ndukwe as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson.
Don’t throw away your shot to see the biggest thing in musical theatre this century, which explores 18th-century American politics through song. The critically acclaimed hip hop musical, for which Miranda wrote the music, lyrics and the book, is about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, as well as inclusion and politics in current-day America. In addition to its swag of Tony Awards — 11 in fact, which includes Best Musical — it has nabbed a Grammy Award and even a Pulitzer Prize.
Image: Daniel Boud.
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Back in 1999 and 2000, Baz Luhrmann‘s beloved movie musical Moulin Rouge! was filmed in Australia. Since 2021, the Tony-winning stage version of that hit feature has been doing the rounds of the country, too. And, in spectacular (spectacular) news, it’s finally heading to Brisbane from Tuesday, May 16, 2023. This time, Brisbane’s QPAC will stand in for the Montmartre Quarter of Paris — the backdrop for a heady romance between lovestruck young bohemian Christian and performer Satine, star of the legendary titular cabaret.
The first-ever Aussie-produced production to win the Tony for Best Musical, Moulin Rouge! The Musical will spin that story in the Lyric Theatre. Yes, the show must go on. As Luhrmann’s award-winning, Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor-starring movie did before it, the stage musical is heavy not just on star-crossed romance, but with a loaded soundtrack that celebrates iconic tunes from across the past five decades.
Image: Michelle Grace Hunder.
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Calling all sleuths of Brisbane — again. If you haven’t fulfilled your murder-mystery fix on the big and small screens over the past few years, and if you missed a whodunnit play hailing from the one and only Agatha Christie back in 2022, then you’d best make a new date with The Mousetrap. Here are two questions for you to solve before you get there: why is it a big deal when is it coming your way once more? The answers: as well as being penned by Christie, it’s the world’s longest-running play; and after last year’s season proved such a hit — and a sellout — it’s returning to Brisbane’s QPAC Playhouse from Friday, May 26–Saturday, June 10.
To answer the other obvious question, yes, it’s all about an unexpected death. The murder-mystery starts with news of a killing in London — and with seven people snowed in at a guest house in the country. They’re strangers, which is classic Christie. When a police sergeant arrives on skis, they’re told that the murderer is among them (which, again, is vintage Christie). They all have wild pasts, too, and all those details are spilled as they’re interrogated, and also try to work out who among them is the killer.
Image: Brian Gleach.
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Usually when Cirque du Soleil hits cities around the world, it has audiences rolling up to its big top to see stunning acrobatic feats. But with the Montreal-based circus company’s latest show, which also marks a pioneering display for the organisation, viewers will be hitting up arenas instead — because CRYSTAL takes place on ice. It still features all the trapeze, juggling, aerial acrobatics and more that fans have seen and loved across the company’s past 41 productions, but then adds a frosty surface rather than its usual stage setup.
And, it includes figure skating and extreme skating into the spectacle as well, two disciplines that’ve never been featured in a Cirque du Soleil production before now. Even better: CRYSTAL will make its debut Down Under in 2023, kicking off in — when else? — winter. Brisbanites, get ready for frosty wonders from Friday, July 21–Sunday, July 30 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
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My my, how can you resist this? MAMMA MIA! The Musical is bringing its Greek-set onstage party back to Brisbane in 2023 — and if you’re a musical fan, an ABBA devotee or perennially keen to indulge in 70s nostalgia, you’ll want to be there. By now, the hit production is well-known around the world, including from previous Aussie runs. It has spawned not one but two movies, too. And, its tale of a young bride-to-be’s quest to find her father before her wedding will liven up QPAC’s Lyric Theatre from Sunday, August 6.
Here we go again with this restaging of the popular 2017 production, which is filled both with romantic chaos and 22 ABBA tracks. It’s one of the biggest jukebox musical hits of the past quarter-century, in fact, as seen by over 65 million people worldwide so far. The story, as theatre audiences have enjoyed since 1999, follows 20-year-old Sophie, who is about to marry her fiancé Sky on the fictional Greek island of Kalokairi. It’s her dream for her dad to walk her down the aisle, but courtesy of her mother Donna’s old diary, she learns that her father could be one of three men: Sam Carmichael, Bill Austin or Harry Bright.
Image: James D Morgan.
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Whether you studied it in high school or just obsessed over Baz Luhrmann‘s glorious 90s movie, everyone knows how Romeo and Juliet ends — and it doesn’t conclude happily for either of its eponymous star-crossed lovers. But what if it didn’t wrap up that way? What if Juliet lived to love again? And what if her experiences from there, after thwarting theatre’s greatest tragedy, involved a whole heap of pop tunes from the last couple of decades?
There’s no need to ponder how all of that might turn out because the answer already exists, all thanks to Olivier Award-winning jukebox musical & Juliet. A hit in London’s West End since 2019, it remixes the iconic love story in multiple ways — tinkering with its narrative and throwing in all that toe-tapping music. Even better: in only its second stop outside of the UK, following Toronto, & Juliet is currently playing Melbourne’s Regent Theatre with a pop soundtrack that includes songs by Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Robyn, Katy Perry, The Weeknd, Kelly Clarkson and more.
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They call it Tina — The Tina Turner Musical, oh Tina — The Tina Turner Musical — and it’s finally coming to Australia. After premiering in London back in 2018, this stage ode to the music icon that’s had Aussies dancing to ‘Nutbush City Limits’ for decades is making its way Down Under, locking in its first local stint in Sydney from May 2023. No, it isn’t taking to the stage in a church house, gin house, school house or outhouse — or on highway number 19, either. But Tina — The Tina Turner Musical will obviously have Theatre Royal Sydney enjoying Turner’s greatest hits in one massive show.
The list of musical numbers includes ‘Nutbush City Limits’, naturally, as well as everything from ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ and ‘Proud Mary’ through to ‘Private Dancer’ and ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?’. The show steps through Turner’s life and fame, including growing up in Nutbush, Tennessee, the hard work that led to her career, all of those aforementioned hits, her 12 Grammy Awards, her volatile time with Ike Turner and her huge solo success. If you’re a fan, Turner herself summed it up — yes, it’s simply the best.
Image: Manuel Harlan.
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When June 2023 arrives at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre, expect three words to echo with enthusiasm: “be our guest”. The Harbour City venue will be home to quite the coup, courtesy of the Australian premiere season of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast musical, which is heading Down Under as a newly reimagined and redesigned production. From Wednesday, June 14, the huge show will bring a tale as old as time to Australia to liven up winter — with this new Beauty and the Beast reworking the original show that premiered in the US in the 90s, and also adapting Disney’s hit 1991 animated movie musical, of course.
Fans can expect the same Oscar-winning and Tony-nominated score courtesy of composer Alan Menken and lyricist Tim Rice, including all the beloved tunes such as ‘Be Our Guest’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It also comes with new dance arrangements by David Chase, and with original choreographer Matt West revisiting his work.
Image: Johan Persson.
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If you’re just a hunk, a hunk of burning love for the one and only Elvis Presley, and you live in Australia, you’ve been having quite the few years. A massive exhibition dedicated to the king of rock ‘n’ roll came our way, Baz Luhrmann‘s AACTA-winning and Oscar-nominated biopic Elvis wowed fans and now a new Presley-focused stage musical will hit Sydney’s State Theatre from Wednesday, August 2.
Called Elvis: A Musical Revolution, this brand-new production will feature more than 40 of the singer’s hits, because there’s just that many songs to include. Expect all of the favourites to be worked into the biographical musical, which means everything from ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Hound Dog’, ‘That’s All Right’ and ‘All Shook Up’ through to ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Burning Love’ and ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’, ‘Earth Angel’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and ‘Are You Lonesome’ are also set to get a whirl as well, as are ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, ‘See See Rider’, ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ and ‘A Little Less Conversation’.
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Pop on your ruby slippers, click your heels three times and prepare to defy gravity: Wicked is returning to Australia. 2023 marks two decades since composer Stephen Schwartz and playwright Winnie Holzman took a book inspired by The Wizard of Oz, put it to music and turned it into one of Broadway’s biggest hits of the 21st century. And, it’s also Australian musical theatre fans’ latest chance to see that very show right here at home — in Sydney from Friday, August 25.
Even if you haven’t seen the blockbuster show before, including on its past Aussie run from 2008–11, then you’ve likely heard of it. Following the Land of Oz’s witches — telling their untold true tale is the musical’s whole angle, in fact — Wicked has notched up more awards than you can fit in a hefty cauldron over the years. That includes three Tonys from ten nominations, a Grammy, an Olivier Award and six Drama Desk Awards. Also huge: its worldwide footprint, playing in 16 countries around the world since its 2003 debut.
Image: Joan Marcus.
Top image: Michelle Grace Hunder.
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