Musical theatre in 2024 offered plenty to see, as always, even if the dance card at some theatre venues was cramped as Arts Centre Melbourne entered major renovations. A few anticipated shows were anticlimactic – fair enough (even thematic) for the Groundhog Day musical, arguably less fair with something like Sarah Brightman’s awkward return to the stage in Sunset Boulevard.
Highlights abounded, too: Ruva Ngwenya’s stunning incarnation of rock legend Tina Turner in the Tina musical, the wives of Henry VIII reimagined as sassy pop stars in SIX, and Kala Gare as Sybylla Melvyn, heading up My Brilliant Career at the MTC in a production that it would be criminal not to tour.
Maverick Newman and Gabbi Bolt are the perfect pairing in Murder for Two.Credit: Mark Gambino
Other personal favourites included the hilarious musical murder mystery from Hayes Theatre Company, Murder for Two, and Christie Whelan Browne’s autobiographical cabaret Life in Plastic.
On the indie theatre scene, all the talk is of La Mama closing public performances in 2025. In a radically underfunded sector, the company, in its mission to nurture indie artists across the communities that depend on it, is taking steps to restructure and secure its future operations. Whether temporary closure is the right strategy remains to be seen, but La Mama will be missed.
Although it is still producing terrific new work – witness Olivia Satchell’s Ball Kids at the Fringe – La Mama’s imminent closure rather obscures creativity elsewhere.
The quality and consistency of the theatre at Red Stitch is worth remarking on, as is Cameron Lukey’s programming at fortyfivedownstairs (which brought us The Inheritance, Hamlet, The Hall and other highlights), as is the rejuvenation of Theatre Works into an indie workhorse under Dianne Toulson.
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Indie theatre-makers need all the support they can get. They’re facing an environment in which government funding for individual artists has fallen away, sometimes to a staggering degree, over the past decade.
It’s some sign of how precarious individual artists are finding things that so many established talents chose to stage shows under the umbrella of the 2024 Fringe Festival. That trend looks set to continue, and Melbourne audiences will be able to enjoy another festival that got around to finding its feet this year, Rising, in June 2025 – a welcome certainty in unsettled times.
