Postponed: Susan Boyle musical Australian tour bumped

The upcoming Australian tour of I Dreamed A Dream, the Susan Boyle musical has been postponed due to a “scheduling conflict”.

The news comes just weeks before scores of Australian music theatre performers were scheduled to commence auditions for the new UK import musical.

A notice on the show’s official Australian website confirms the news:

“The producers of I Dreamed a Dream regret to advise that due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, the upcoming Australian Tour has been postponed”

The notice on susanboylemusical.com.au also assures customers that they will receive “a full refund of the ticket price” and that “the producers regret any inconvenience caused”.

AussieTheatre understands that auditionees across the country have not been notified of the postponement, and are still preparing audition material at this stage.

In November last year, Producer Paul Dainty of the Dainty Group and Actor’s Equity worked together to ensure that 80% of the performers in the proposed tour would be Australian, despite the UK licensor initially requiring a ‘fully imported cast’. This meant that 10 of the 12 roles in the show were to be filled by Australian performers, and today’s news means 10 less Aussie performers (and countless Australian crew) will have work come May this year.

It is unclear as to whether the scheduling conflict involved theatre availability, availability of imported performers or another conflict entirely.

The postponement of the 10 week tour, which was set to commence at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne on May 31 and transfer to Sydney’s Theatre Royal from July 4, now leaves several theatres across the country open for other productions.

Although ‘postpone’ implies rescheduling at a later date, it is interesting to note that other musicals (such as Ghost The Musical, Strange Bedfellows and the Sydney season of Rock of Ages) that have also been ‘postponed’ in Australia have disappeared without so much as a peep since.

Could I Dreamed A Dream suffer the same fate?