The Lovers (Theatre Royal) ★★★★½

Book, music and lyrics by Laura Murphy, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shake & Stir Theatre Co. Theatre Royal Sydney. 31 Oct – 15 Nov, 2025.

Three years after its debut at the Sydney Opera House, Laura Murphy’s musical The Lovers is back with so many giant video screens you’d be forgiven for thinking Kip Williams had come back to town. Bigger, louder and flashier, this version of The Lovers rivals & Juliet for the Pop Shakespeare crown.

It’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but not as you know it, as our disco/cowgirl fairy leader Oberon (Stellar Perry) and pouf-ball-headed Puck (Jayme-Lee Hanekom) try to make a couple of Athenian youths fall in love. They just don’t really have a good track record at this romance stuff, and it’s clear to see why.

Loved-up couple Hermia (Loren Hunter) and Lysander (Mat Verevis) have run away so they can get married. But Hermia is being pursued by Demetrius (Jason Arrow), the guy she’s been promised to. Meanwhile, Demetrius is being stalked by Hermia’s best friend, Helena (Natalie Abbott). So if Oberon and Puck can just get Demetrius to fall for Helena, then everyone’s problems are solved, right? Right?

First staged in 2022 by Bell Shakespeare, this new production brings fresh staging and a blended cast which sees original cast members Natalie Abbott and Stellar Perry return, joined by Hamilton’s Jason Arrow, Six’s Loren Hunter, Beautiful’s Mat Verevis and more (even the covers are stacked—with Titanique’s Jenni Little and Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’s Nic Van Lits waiting in the wings). It’s a powerhouse team belting Murphy’s hooky tunes—you will walk out singing. Needless to say, the whole show sounds stunning, and everyone gets to stretch their comedy muscles as well.

Shake & Stir’s Artistic Director Nick Skubij brings an almost sci-fi eye to the musical, with cosmic expanses filling the stage and a lone tree that reminded me of the Hugh Jackman brain-bender The Fountain. Isabel Hudson’s design frames the stage in Elizabethan ruins and makes abundant use of the stage’s triple revolve—that’s right, THREE revolves! Suck it, Les Misérables!

As with the cast, many creatives from the original staging return with a brand-new vision. Trent Suidgeest’s lighting channels stadium pop gigs, and David Bergman’s sound and video design take cues from games and music videos—this is just visually gorgeous work.

Yvette Lee’s choreography carries forward some moves from the original (I instantly recognised the “nay-nay-nay” hand wave) while elevating the comedy of the boys’ rivalry. I don’t know if Lee is also responsible for the confetti-ography, but it was impressive nonetheless. Can you ever have too much confetti? The Lovers is definitely trying to prove the answer is NO!

Musically, The Lovers rocks! Laura Murphy uses the language of pop songs to play with our understanding of Shakespeare and to ground the action for a contemporary audience. And it’s exciting to see the work return on a bigger stage and with a more commercial vision.

So, if you already saw the 2022 production, should you go see The Lovers again? Yes! I loved Sean Rennie’s pastel-fluid fantasia, but Skubij’s shimmering, sparkly show is a whole new thing. Personally, I just find it exciting to see the same show given two different visual aesthetics in such a short space of time.

Sydney, we’re being spoilt right now, having two terrific Australian musicals on our stages at the same time. So make the most of it—this doesn’t happen very often.