Canberra Theatre’s upcoming Shrek The Musical season has been postponed amid complications due to COVID-19 restrictions affecting the tour’s scheduled dates and capacity to tour.
The Brisbane season of Shrek, originally due to run 9 January to 7 February, will belatedly commence later this week on 14 January due to Brisbane’s three-day lockdown which started on 8 January.
Shrek’s Canberra season was then slated to start 14 February and run for an undetermined time to accommodate as large a crowd as possible with seating restrictions.
Canberra Theatre Centre say they are exploring opportunities to present Shrek The Musical “at a later date” following the announcement of it being postponed.
“We know that this is disappointing news for our audience,” said Canberra Theatre Centre Director, Alex Budd.
“Canberrans are eager to experience more blockbuster musicals at Canberra Theatre Centre and we intend to meet this demand as soon as we are able.”
Existing ticketholders will be refunded and will be contacted by Canberra Theatre Centre.
Canberra’s love for major commercial musical theatre productions has been demonstrated twice in the past three years; initially with Mamma Mia in 2017 and then in 2019 with Westside Story.
“Unfortunately, Canberra hasn’t had an equal dose, they’re obviously not the only productions people want to see,” Mr Budd said.
He said running major commercial productions in Canberra hasn’t been feasible in the past given the economic limitations of Canberra Theatre’s 1,200-seat capacity.
“We’ll do what we can prior to the new theatre eventuating down the track, which is a high priority infrastructure project of the ACT Government,” he said.
Mr Budd said that when complete, the proposed 2,000-seat venue would become “a real game changer”.
“When you’ve got the ability to bring 2,000 people a night to anything, it changes the economics of everything you can do,” he said.
