Green Room Awards

The nominations are out for the shows we loved the most in 2007. And what a year it was. According to the President of the Green Room Awards Association Dr Mark Williams, “Audiences for 2007 were delighted, thrilled and engaged by a huge variety of work by performers at the top of their game”. Crowds flocked to homegrown productions at Melbourne venues like the Arts Centre and La Mama, while the red carpet also rolled out for a big shows swinging in from interstate and overseas.

Musical fever has swept the country and it’s no surprise that this year’s hotly contended awards involve a song and dance number. Melbourne town continues to buzz with big shows with big tunes - just about every major venue in the CBD is staging, or getting ready to stage a musical. Up for nomination are our four top musicals for 2007 – Spamalot (9 nominations), Miss Saigon (8 nominations), Priscilla (8 nominations) and Keating (6 nominations). Menopause the Musical, Sweet Charity, 42nd Street have also secured a spot on the list.

Other nominations include:
Cabaret: Barry Humphries and Friends: Back With A Vengeance!, The Beautiful Losers: Fresh Filth and Tripod: How to Train an Attack Dog from Scratch; Dance: This Show is About People, Symphonie Fantasique and Les Presages (Australian Ballet); Opera: Alcina, The Tales of Hoffman and Don Giovanni, (Opera Australia) and Theatre: Ying Tong, The Government Inspector and Exit the King.

On Sunday, 20 April, the Victorian Arts Centre will be glittering with the who’s who of performance when the awards are announced at the 25th anniversary of this prestigious event. Stay tuned.

Judith Hatton