Revisiting Shane Warne: The Musical – this brilliant show should be considered an Aussie classic

<p dir="ltr">In response to the tragic death of Shane Warne last week, actor and composer Eddie Perfect <a href="https://www.facebook.com/eddieperfectpage/posts/374260711193728" target="_blank">took to Facebook</a> to express his shock and surprise at Warne’s sudden passing.</p><p dir="ltr">“I just don’t want to say goodbye – there was so much more life to come,” he wrote.</p><p dir="ltr">Before Perfect was the composer for the Tony award nominated Broadway musical Beetlejuice, his first full-length musical was something much closer to home: Shane Warne: The Musical.</p><p dir="ltr">The musical started as a joke. In 2005, Perfect was on tour performing in The Big Con with Max Gillies and kept seeing Warne’s name all over the newspapers. He made an offhand comment in a phone call to his manager, Michael Lynch, that someone should write a musical about the cricketer.</p><p dir="ltr">To his great surprise, Lynch (a great cricket fan) told him to go for it.</p><p dir="ltr">The resulting musical is an overwhelmingly faithful rendering of Warne’s life, staging both his triumphs and his downfalls.</p><p dir="ltr">It took Perfect three years to write the show, in which he read every book about Warne he could find (he joked in his Facebook post he has a master’s degree in Warney) before a full production opened in Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre in December 2008.</p><p dir="ltr">In 2009, it went on tour, playing seasons at the Regal Theatre in Perth and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney.</p><p dir="ltr">While it was critically acclaimed, it did not perform as well as expected at the box office and closed early.</p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-shane-warne-the-musical-this-brilliant-show-should-be-considered-an-aussie-classic-178644?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Copy link</a><a href="mailto:?subject=Revisiting Shane Warne: The Musical – this brilliant show should be considered an Aussie classic — The Conversation&body=Hi. 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In 2005, Perfect was on tour performing in <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-big-con-20050306-gdzq0y.html" target="_blank">The Big Con</a> with Max Gillies and kept seeing Warne’s name all over the newspapers. He made an offhand comment in a phone call to his manager, Michael Lynch, that someone should write a musical about the cricketer.</p><p dir="ltr">To his great surprise, Lynch (a great cricket fan) told him to go for it.</p><p dir="ltr">The resulting musical is an overwhelmingly faithful rendering of Warne’s life, staging both his triumphs and his downfalls.</p><p dir="ltr">It took Perfect three years to write the show, in which he read every book about Warne he could find (he joked in his Facebook post he has a master’s degree in Warney) before a full production opened in Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre in December 2008.</p><p dir="ltr">In 2009, it went on tour, playing seasons at the Regal Theatre in Perth and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney.</p><p dir="ltr">While it was <a href="https://www.australianstage.com.au/200905222571/reviews/sydney/shane-warne-the-musical.html" target="_blank">critically acclaimed</a>, it did not perform as well as expected at the box office and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/play-abandoned-warnie-the-musical-in-off-a-short-run-20090521-gdtjla.html" target="_blank">closed early</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">Five years later, in 2013, the musical was revised and presented in a revamped concert version. This iteration added new material covering Warne’s retirement from international cricket, his dramatic weight loss and his high profile relationship with the actress Elizabeth Hurley.</p><p dir="ltr">While the musical may have started as a joke, in style and substance it is anything but. It deserves to be considered an Australian musical theatre classic.</p>