Back to the Future: The Musical

Great Scott! This stage-to-screen hit is finally making its Australian premiere, bringing its DeLorean to Sydney.
Sarah Ward
Published on February 10, 2025

Overview

We're going back ... back to see Back to the Future, this time as a musical on the Sydney Lyric Theatre's stage. First floated 20 years ago by the big-screen trilogy's screenwriter Bob Gale, then finally premiering in 2020, the song-filled take on Marty McFly and Doc Brown's exploits has proven an award-winning success in London's West End and on Broadway. In 2025, the DeLorean is finally heading to Australia.

The power of Back to the Future isn't really a curious thing. As viewers have known since 1985, the Michael J Fox (The Good Fight)-starring sci-fi/comedy is timeless delight. But as well as making film lovers weep with joy for almost four decades, the iconic movie has been making other folks sing — the casts of the Olivier Award-winning Back to the Future: The Musical, that is. Aussie audiences will get to see the results from Friday, September 26, 2025 in the show's Down Under premiere season.

Exclaiming "great Scott!" is obviously the only fitting response to this development, and to the production in general — and there's clearly plenty to get excited about. Since initially racing towards clocktowers onstage in the UK since early 2020 (around a pandemic hiatus or two, of course), Back to the Future: The Musical has picked up the Olivier Award for Best New Musical, and then was nominated for two Tony Awards in 2024. And yes, the show does indeed follow the Marty McFly and Doc Brown-led story we all know and adore, but with songs, including renditions of Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B Goode' and Huey Lewis and the News' 'The Power of Love' and 'Back in Time', naturally.

Australian fans will now want to speed at 88 miles per hour towards the Harbour City, given that it is the only Aussie city where a season of Back to the Future: The Musical has been announced so far. If you won't be making a visit to the New South Wales capital by plane or DeLorean, start crossing your fingers that the production heads to other Aussie cities — or pop on your own white lab coat, start tinkering around with electronics and whip up your own time machine to try to make it happen.

Also featuring music and lyrics by OG Back to the Future composer Alan Silvestri and acclaimed songwriter Glen Ballard (Jagged Little Pill the Musical), plus a book by Gale — who co-penned all three Back to the Future film scripts with filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (Here) — Back to the Future: The Musical was nominated for seven Olivier Awards. It only won the big one, but emerged victorious over heavy-hitters and fellow screen-to-stage shows Moulin Rouge! The Musical and Frozen.

General public tickets go on sale from 9am on Friday, February 14, 2025.

Images: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman, and Sean Ebsworth Barnes.

Information

Tap and select Add to Home Screen to access Concrete Playground easily next time. x