AN AUSTRALIAN POWERHOUSE GETS ORIGINAL

Michael Cassel Group has a development slate of original projects that's ready to bear fruit

Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray, now bound for Broadway. Photo: Marc Brenner

When the Australian theater producer Michael Cassel founded the eponymous Michael Cassel Group in 2012, he established the brand with an explosion of big-name, licensed Broadway replicas around Australasia and around the world—starting with Les Misérables and The Lion King, up through the current Hamilton and upcoming MJ.

Replica productions like those are still what the company is best known for—but that could soon change.

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MCG has grown over the years by investing in Broadway and West End titles, diversifying into concert promotion and ticketing, and lining its coffers with an infusion of private equity funds. And along the way, the company has quietly developed a slate of new musicals in an effort to add its own IP into the mix of shows the company shepherds across the globe.

Now, as MCG’s recent, Olivier-winning production of The Picture of Dorian Gray readies for Broadway and Dear Evan Hansen, the company’s first non-replica staging, preps for a fall opening in Sydney, the company looks ready to have another growth spurt, aiming to premiere its first original project by the end of next year.

In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight:

• the MCG development slate and which projects look most likely to make it to the stage first,

• the current titles keeping the company busy at home and around the world,

• the role private equity plays in MCG’s growth,

• the markets across Australia and Asia that the company’s tours connect into a global road circuit, and

• why you can’t get a theater in Australia until 2028.

Here’s what to know about what MCG has coming up.

NOW PLAYING

To get a sense of the current scope of the Michael Cassel Group’s activities, take a look at what it’s got going on right now or any minute now:

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Following its Sydney Theatre Company premiere in 2020, Cassel brought this multimedia, one-actor adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel—with Succession Emmy winner Sarah Snook playing all 26 characters—to the West End, where the show became a buzzy hit and scored an Olivier for Snook (plus one more for costume design). Next stop: Broadway, in a transfer that Cassel tells me is aiming to start up in New York early next year.

& Juliet
Following a March 2023 bow in Melbourne, a stop in Singapore and a run in Perth, this Broadway replica production just wrapped up with a six-month stayover in Sydney that ended July 12.

Hamilton
MCG was behind the international tour that opened in Manila in September, went on to play Abu Dhabi and finished in Singapore in June. Now the set from that Broadway replica staging has made its way back Sydney for a what Cassel affectionately calls a “mop-up run” after COVID closures in 2021 forced the company to refund some 180,000 tickets for the musical’s initial stop in the city. After a Sydney run that finishes in October, further international stops await. “The aim is to take it to as many markets as viable,” he says. (I talked to one of the stars of that international tour in this story from last month.)

Titanique
Cassel is going off-piste for this one, bringing the Off Broadway hit, a parody mash-up of Titanic and the songs of Celine Dion, not to one of Sydney’s traditional musical venues but to the Grand Electric, a 380-seat cabaret space. “Because of the population and market size, Sydney doesn’t really have any Off Broadway-style venues where a show can play an open-ended run,” Cassel says. “That’s what we want to try and establish here.”

Dear Evan Hansen
The first non-replica production MCG has had a hand in originating (and part of an ongoing partnership and first-look deal with Sydney Theatre Company), this new staging from director Dean Bryant plays STC Oct. 12-Nov. 24. If it hits, MCG could pick up the production for commercial runs in Oz and beyond.

MJ
Michael Cassel Group is one of the Broadway producers of this successful Michael Jackson bio, and the company has already had visits from the show’s American team in preparation for an Australian debut that kicks off in Sydney in February 2025.

Beetlejuice
MCG is currently casting the Aussie production of Beetlejuice, starting perfs in Melbourne in May 2025.

MCG’s production of & Juliet, which just finished a run in Sydney. Photo: Daniel Boud

THE FOUR LEGS UNDER THE TABLE