In 2009, Christie Whelan Browne premiered Britney Spears: The Cabaret, written and directed by Dean Bryant with musical direction by Mathew Frank. It was a stunning, surprising production that brilliantly satirised the price of fame. There were laughs, as you’d expect, but there was also a great deal of humanity, compassion and pathos.
Barry Humphries was so impressed that he commissioned Bryant and Frank to create a new cabaret show for Whelan Browne for the 2015 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, of which he was Artistic Director. The show that finally eventuated was called Show People, which, after a short season at Chapel Off Chapel in Melbourne, is now about to play in the Sydney Festival.
Described by The Guardian as “an exciting and deftly balanced work that is as much a celebration of the Australian musical theatre industry as it is an indictment of it,” Show People features six monologues by male and female characters at various stages of a musical theatre career.
Bryant says that he wrote Show People “as an homage to two of the greatest loves in my life – musical theatre and...
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