Based on the incredible true story of writer Tony Briggs’ mother, The Sapphires follows four Yorta Yorta women who blaze a trail from regional Victoria to the frontlines of Vietnam — entertaining American soldiers, breaking barriers and discovering love along the way.

Featuring ’60s soul classics performed live including Respect, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss), this joyous production transforms the intimate Bille Brown Theatre into an electrifying concert-style celebration — up close, personal and impossible to resist.

For more than 25 years, the multi-award-winning play — and the hit film it inspired — have captivated audiences around the world. At its heart, The Sapphires is a proud story of First Nations women whose talent, humour and resilience lit up a remarkable moment in Australian history — a story that, for many years, remained largely untold.

Now the beloved musical returns in a sparkling new production, with the next generation of First Nations performers stepping into the legacy of the women who inspired the story, led by original director and theatre legend Wesley Enoch.

Big-hearted, infectious and full of soul, this celebration of sisterhood, culture and unforgettable music builds to a roof-raising finale — and promises the feel-good musical night out you’ll love from the very first note.

The Sapphires
28 April – 24 May 2026
Bille Brown Theatre, Brisbane
www,ueenslandtheatre.com.au

A show of young love and survival!

Once in a blue moon, in the middle of nowhere, two teenage boys meet under a lemon tree. When they look at each other, it’s tense, exciting, and strange.

Ty and Neddy fall madly in love, as teenagers are wont to do. After a rough start, a fragile friendship fruits into a heady romance.

If history would just unfurl a little differently, the boys might have a beautiful future ahead of them. But without knowing it, Ty and Neddy are poised on the brink of a world that is about to change forever.

It’s the early 19th century. Ty is River Mob. Neddy is Mountain Mob. And the earth they stand together on is about to be declared ‘Australia’.

Featuring Pertame and Tiwi actor Joseph Althouse (The Visitors) and Danny Howard (Jacky), who has Barrd, Yamatji, Noongar, Bunuba and Ngadju ties, Whitefella Yella Tree is the La Boite debut of award-winning Palawa playwright Dylan Van Den Berg, winner of the Griffin Award, the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award, the David Williamson Prize and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

Co-directed with subtlety and sophistication by Griffin Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Declan Greene and Wiradjuri and Worimi theatremaker Amy Sole, Whitefella Yella Tree is a heart-warming and heartbreaking story about love, Country, and Blak queerness.

Whitefella Yella Tree
23 October – 8 November 2025
La Boite Theatre, Brisbane
www.laboite.com.au

The ensemble cast consists of international theatre star Anna O’Byrne (My Fair Lady, Love Never Dies) as Mollie Ralston, Helpmann Award winner Alex Rathgeber (Anything Goes, The Phantom of the Opera) as Giles Ralston, Laurence Boxhall (As You Like It, Jumpy) as Christopher Wren, Geraldine Turner (Present Laughter, Don’s Party) as Mrs Boyle, Adam Murphy (Shakespeare in Love, Aladdin) as Major Metcalf, in her professional stage debut Charlotte Friels as Miss Casewell, Gerry Connolly (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui) as Mr Paravicini, and Tom Conroy (Jasper Jones, My Brilliant Career) as Detective Sergeant Trotter. Jack Bannister (Romeo and Juliet, Lysa and The Freeborn Dames), Elisa Colla (My Fair Lady, Wicked) and Chris Parker (Daylight Savings, The Club) complete the cast as standbys.

The Mousetrap will be directed by Australian theatre icon Robyn Nevin, with costume design and associate set design by Isabel Hudson, and lighting design by Trudy Dalgleish. The Mousetrap is produced by John Frost for Crossroads Live Australia.

“I’m thrilled with the overwhelmingly positive response to the news that The Mousetrap will be playing in Australia to celebrate its 70th anniversary,” said John Frost. “Robyn Nevin has assembled a stellar cast for this new production of an enduring and much-loved murder mystery. Will you solve the mystery and pick the murderer?”

The Mousetrap had its world premiere on 6 October 1952 at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham. After a brief tour, it opened in London’s West End on 25 November 1952 at the Ambassadors Theatre, where it ran until 23 March 1974. It immediately transferred to the larger St Martin’s Theatre next door, where it continues to this day.

The longest-running West End show, it has by far the longest run of any play anywhere in the world, with over 28,500 performances so far. The play has a twist ending, which the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal after leaving the theatre.

Agatha Christie originally wrote the story as a short radio play entitled Three Blind Mice, which was broadcast in 1947 as a birthday present for Queen Mary. She eventually adapted the work into a short story before again rewriting it for the stage as The Mousetrap. Ironically, Christie did not expect the play to run for more than a few months and stipulated that no film of The Mousetrap be made until at least six months after the West End Production closed. 70 years on, as the show continues its historic London run, a film adaptation looks unlikely at this stage.

“A masterpiece… Of all the stage versions of Christie’s books, The Mousetrap is by far the best.” – The Chicago Tribune

“The cleverest murder mystery of the British Theatre. I think The Mousetrap could run forever” – Daily Telegraph UK

“Even more thrilling than the plot is the atmosphere of shouldering suspense. No one brews it better than Agatha Christie” – Daily Express

After a local woman is murdered, the guests and staff at Monkswell Manor find themselves stranded during a snowstorm. It soon becomes clear that the killer is among them, and the seven strangers grow increasingly suspicious of one another. A police detective, arriving on skis, interrogates the suspects: the newlyweds running the house; a spinster with a curious background; an architect who seems better equipped to be a chef; a retired Army major; a strange little man who claims his car has overturned in a drift; and a jurist who makes life miserable for everyone. When a second murder takes place, tensions and fears escalate. This record-breaking murder mystery features a brilliant surprise finish from the foremost mystery writer of all time.

For 70 years, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has kept millions of people from every corner of the globe on the edge of their seats. It is the genre-defining murder mystery from the best-selling novelist of all time … case closed! Can you solve this world-famous mystery for yourself?

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap
4-20 November 2022
Playhouse, QPAC, Brisbane
www.themousetrap.com.au

Meet Jenny. She’s 15. Life’s pretty crazy right now. Jenny lives in a small Queensland mining town, she’s falling in love for the first time and every afternoon she has to work the fryer at the Chook Nook, where the only thing more tasteless than the chicken is her boss’ fake tan.

Developed in consultation with young people from communities across Central Queensland, Fly-In Fly-Out is an hilarious and touching play that shows how we all strive to adapt when our world changes around us.

From the makers of the critically-acclaimed Snagged, Ithaca Road, and Chasing the Lollyman.

Fly-In Fly-Out at JWCOCA
Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 June 2015
Performance Space, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts –  Fortitude Valley
www.judithwrightcentre.com

Fly In Fly Out – Trailer from debase productions on Vimeo.

His infamous letter, written in 1897 from Reading Gaol to his lover and betrayer, holds a tabloid fascination. It is an intimate investigation of a world class dramatist and shamed celebrity suffering political imprisonment, censorship and trial by media.

Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis is sexually uncompromising, audacious and exquisitely powerful. A one-man tour-de-force performance by Brian Lucas.

This brutal and touching work investigates human rights, their quashing, emergence and acceptance – it charts the shift and suffering of discrimination for queer communities, drawing together the threads of current debates about inequality under the law and reflecting ongoing concerns through the mirror of time; the right to love, who you love, no matter their gender or sex.

Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis is a contemporary theatre adaption of a classic literary work never before seen on stage. An exciting collaboration between David Fenton and Brian Lucas, with vision design by Ray Pittman and composition by David Megarrity.

Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis
Wednesday 22 April – Saturday 02 May, 2015
Brisbane Powerhouse
www.brisbanepowerhouse.org

The play is a dark comedic drama exploring the life, art, psyche and sexuality of charismatic artist Francis Bacon, once famously described by Margaret Thatcher as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures.”

Bacon’s controversial reputation began during his tumultuous youth when he was beaten and banished from the family home after being caught wearing his mother’s stockings. He then travelled extensively throughout Europe and took a variety of jobs – and lovers – to survive, before his paintings gained attention in the 1930s for their bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Success and tragedy can go hand in when you are determined to live life to the full and despite Bacon’s work selling at record breaking values, the bon vivant was haunted by the deeply personal losses of those he loved most dearly.

Writer/performer Garry Roost, known from his work in East Enders, The Bill and Black Books, had been told repeatedly of his resemblance to Francis Bacon and it was these continued comparisons that first sparked his interest in the artist.

“After researching him I immediately became struck by what an incredible human being he was,” he says. “Playing Francis has obsessed me for the past three years.”

POPE HEAD, which draws on the words and thoughts of Bacon himself, has surprised audiences with Roost’s ability to capture Bacon’s mannerisms and personality so completely.

“Maggie Skawinski, a close confidante of Bacon, came to a performance and remarked to a friend ‘it’s Francis’.

“A lot of my performance relies on instinct and a kinship of sorts” reflects Roost. “I have a natural understanding of the complexity of the man.

“I think the most powerful aspect of his legacy is how he grasped life with both hands. Bacon truly understood life.” Brisbane will be the last stop on POPE HEAD’s Australian East Coast tour, which will include performances in a number of Melbourne art galleries and a two week season in Sydney alongside the 2015 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

POPE HEAD – The Secret Life of Francis Bacon
Fri 13 & Sat 14 March, 7:30pm
Venue Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts
420 Brunswick St (Cnr Berwick St), Fortitude Valley
www.judithwrightcentre.com

A play about a sex blogger and a gifted novelist who collide between love and the digital age.

Their age, their writing style, their attitude toward personal privacy and just about everything else they are opposites, but each holds the key to what the other really wants — and needless to say, within minutes of meeting they’re at it like rabbits.

Veronica Neave as Olivia, is now working with preciousness on her second book but reluctant to let it loose on the cruel modern literary marketplace, she’s joined unexpectedly at her writer’s retreat by Thomas Larkin as Ethan, a blogger whose notoriety rests on his lurid online accounts of a year spent having sex with strangers.

Sex with Strangers faces the anxieties and the compromises by all writers in the digital age where traditional literary values are dying along with the print media, while readers gravitate toward the ephemeral, sensational world of blogging.

“No compromises. No second-guessing. No hopes. No expectations.”

Sex with Strangers
Wednesday 11 – Sunday 22 February, 2015
Brisbane Powerhouse
 www.brisbanepowerhouse.org