Category: Hayes Theatre Co

Going off to the Hayes Theatre in the expectation of once more (I have seen at least three other productions in Sydney) engaging with Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. I had a palpable sense of excitement. Stephen Sondheim is one of the Greats of contemporary theatre. I have rated him alongside Edward Albee, a writer and figure of the same generation – Albee born in 1928 and Sondheim in 1930. Albee passed away in 2016 at the age of 88 and Sondheim in March celebrated his 91st birthday. Two Great American geniuses spanning two centuries with a body…

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, is a work, an autobiographical work from Tony Kushner. He is famous for ANGELS IN AMERICA (1993) – maybe, as well, for the screenplay of LINCOLN (2012). Born in Manhattan, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, when he was a young boy. He wanted to write about race relations, the civil rights movement,  African Americans and Southern Jews in the early 1960’s. This play comes from sorrow, from anger and grief, and also from hope learned from history, from recent history, which has shown us both the terrors and also the pleasures of change, which shows that…

AMERICAN PSYCHO – The Musical, is an adaptation of the ‘infamous’ novel by Bret Easton Ellis of 1991. It is a satiric observation and skewering of the American values of the 1980’s in which the (anti-) hero, Patrick Bateman, a corporate aspirant, among many other idiosyncrasies, regards Donald Trump as a figure of admiration. It is an ironic note that we in 2019, 28 years later, are engaged with ‘a media-saturated society where a narcissistic, greedy misogynist with severe status anxiety can become the leader of the free world’. Donald Trump is a prescient mentor, indeed, for the Musical’s hero…

Hayes Theatre Co presents, SHE LOVES ME. Book by Joe Masteroff. Music by Jerry Bock. Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Based on a play by Miklos Laszlo. At The Hayes Theatre. 24th August – 15th September. SHE LOVES ME, is a musical appearing first on Broadway in 1963. Famously revived on Broadway in 1994. Roundabout Theatre again revived it in 2016 – all productions attracting Tony Award nominations – as did the Menuier Chocolate Factory in London. I first met the show as part of Neglected Musicals presented at The Hayes in May, 2012. Based on a play called Parfumiere, by…

Photo by John McRae One Eyed Man Productions in association with Neglected Musicals and Hayes Theatre Co Presents, CALAMITY JANE. Adapted by Ronald Hanmer and Phil Park, from the Stage Play by Charles K. Freeman, after the Warner Bros. Film written by James O’Hanlon. Lyrics, by Paul Francis Webster. Music by Sammy Fain, at the Belvoir Theatre Upstairs, Surry Hills. 23 August – 30 September. This is the same production of CALAMITY JANE, Directed by Richard Carroll, Choreographed by Cameron Mitchell, under the Musical direction of Nigel Ubrihien that we saw at the Hayes Theatre in 2017. On tour and…

Photo by Grant Leslie Blue Saints Productions, in association with Hayes Theatre Co presents, IN THE HEIGHTS, Music and Lyrics, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Book by, Quiara Alegria Hudes, at the Hayes Theatre, Greenknowe Ave. Potts Point. 16 MKarch – 16 April. IN THE HEIGHTS is an American Musical that first saw the light of day in 2005 and arrived on Broadway in 2008. It was nominated for 13 Tony Awards, and won 4, including Best musical. This work was conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also wrote the Lyrics and Music, and is centred on a corner of shops in Washington…