Slow fade on Strange Bedfellows?

For fans of Australian-made musicals, the last six months haven’t been particularly positive. Only a few weeks ago the sports-and-suburbia musical Every Single Saturday cancelled its large-scale Theatre Royal run in Sydney to focus on extending its smaller season at a smaller theatre.

It reminded us at AussieTheatre of another distinctly Australian show that seems to have disappeared without a word.

It’s been over six months since producer Spencer McLaren announced, in an AussieTheatre exclusive, that the new musical Strange Bedfellows which was set to open in Melbourne in October last year would be delayed due to casting issues – with a projected delay of just ten weeks.

Originally, the show was to be directed by Rodger Hodgman and star John Wood, Peter Cousens, Melissa Langton, and Lucy Durack. There have been no updates on the status of the show, and no murmurings to suggest it would be going forward any time soon, despite a rumour in September last year that speculated the show would be heading to Perth.

In a recent conversation with AussieTheatre, actor Peter Cousens confided that “I don’t think [Strange Bedfellows] will be re-mounted any time soon,” stating that he doesn’t think the show will open in Sydney in the future.

“We have all just moved on,” he said. “I am now busy with other projects and so are the other artists.”

With the very public announcement of Lucy Durack being cast in the coveted role of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde (which opens twelve months after the original opening date of Strange Bedfellows), and Cousens’ statement, things don’t look good for this incarnation of John Foreman and Dean Murphy’s Aussie show about mateship.