With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the Tony Award winner, A Little Night Music at Hayes Theatre Co. encompasses love, desire and regret. Indeed, regret is the most poignant emotion of the production, touching everyone in different ways. Directed by Dean Bryant, we follow the story of two couples, each with their own secrets and…
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It takes extraordinary strength of character (both in personality and portrayal) to deliver a flawless performance while one of your leads is being rushed to hospital with a serious injury, but that is what the cast of Assassins did on opening night at the Sydney Opera House this week. A sharply designed, brilliantly performed production,…
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I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting walking into Hayes Theatre to see Gypsy, a musical based on the memoirs of famous burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. All I know is this wasn’t it. The performance focuses heavily on the early life of Gypsy Rose Lee, growing up in the shadow of her sister…
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Sondheim, as always, has to make things difficult. If it’s not in his chords then it’s the subject matter of his musicals. However Assassins, one of the more rarely performed of the Sondheim repertoire, finds itself locked and loaded in good hands with Dean Bryant at this latest production at the Hayes. Superb casting all…
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From little things big things grow. Paul Kelly could have sung this about Australia’s very own, Dame Nellie Melba. This famous soprano grew up with rather modest beginnings before she forged her own fabulous career. She eventually took the world by storm and become a renowned opera diva. The Hayes Theatre are playing host to…
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I was a week late to the game on seeing this one, as I was overseas during opening week, and try as I might I couldn’t help watching as the glowing reviews went up one by one. I mean really, with the likes of Hayden Tee and Matthew Backer I knew Hayes was on another winner,…
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Not too often can you honestly say that a smaller independent production of a musical is undeniably better than a full-scale Broadway production, but Big Fish at the Hayes Theatre has surely got to be one of those times. The signature intimate theatre and the sincerity of the performances gives this musical the biggest of…
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The Australian Premiere of Big Fish is coming to Hayes Theatre Co from 18 April to 14 May 2017. Based on the celebrated novel by Daniel Wallace and the acclaimed film directed by Tim Burton, Big Fish centres on a travelling salesman whose larger-than-life stories thrill everyone around him. But their son Will, about to…
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Legendary frontierswoman; notorious daredevil; profane storyteller; unwomanly radical – CALAMITY JANE is one of the most immediately recognizable figures of the old American West. And now, after a sell-out performance in August last year as part of Neglected Musicals, The Hayes Theatre is bringing the Wild West back in a “stripped-back, rough-and-ready reimagining” of the classic musical….
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Mack and Mabel is a musical that I hadn’t yet gotten around to listening or paying much attention to. When the Hayes announced that they were producing it however, I decided to take a nosy into what it was all about. From what I could garner the musical was a bit of a well-known, somewhat…
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Building on the success of their revival of Miracle City, Luckiest Productions are set to bring the 1940s/50s set Only Heaven Knows to the Hayes Theatre Co‘s Potts Point stage next year. Following Tim, a teenage playwright who leaves his intolerant family in Melbourne for the bright lights of Sydney’s Kings Cross, Alex Harding’s play…
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RENT is just one of those musicals that everyone knows. Perhaps it’s due to the success of the film, or perhaps just because it’s story and characters are so resonating, but it has clearly become a mainstay staple in musical theatre 101s. For whatever reason it is also a musical that I had actually never…
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