THE BOOMKAK PANTO

A dry, dusty little Aussie town, somewhere in the back of beyond, with all the decency, diversity – and division – that you’d expect in a rural microcosm. But Boomkak is confronting some massive challenges now that the Big Developer has set his sights on the town, and this little community finds itself in a fight for survival. How can they possibly fight back?

By putting on a panto, of course.

From the creative minds behind Calamity Jane (a smash hit at Belvoir in 2018) comes a piece of utter joy – a love letter to theatre, to community, to the resilience of our Little Aussie Towns™ – lo-fi, big-hearted, and Belvoir to the back teeth. With new songs from Tony Award nominee Eddie Perfect, and a couple of Aussie rock classics, dance, and old-fashioned silliness, The Boomkak Panto is a mad, sparkling jewel, a reward for getting through these dark and strange times.

Photos by Brett Boardman

Reviews

“The whole show is a party… The show confidently and winkingly embraces the silliness of its adopted form… Gay’s instincts for musical comedy have always been sharp, and she and Carroll make a good partnership: he has a taste for clarifying the laughter that comes from controlled chaos…The laughs come thick and fast, and the hardest-hit targets are the most deserving… Every moment is a pleasure… It’s crafted with clever precision to be gloriously stupid. What an absolute treat.” - The Guardian

“Irreverent at every turn… Silliness and chaos reign supreme, in the best panto tradition” - Sydney Morning Herald

“Strikes the perfect balance of humility, relevance and all-singing, all-dancing ridiculous fun… Gay roped in the team that helped her stage a critically-praised, modern queer-coded reimagining of the classic Wild West movie musical Calamity Jane to have a run at an Aussie answer to the riddle of panto. And they have absolutely nailed it.” - Time Out 

“Consistently entertains with the art form’s mad camp tyranny of the silly, the unexpected and the brazenly over the top… The Boomkak Panto is a silly play for the silly season, tipsily leaning to the left and bursting with a genuine if critical love for the tradition it mocks.” - Limelight

“In the end, you will feel ridiculously uplifted and not a little teary because you haven’t had such fun in…ever… Virginia Gay has, with a little assistance she says, from her co-conspirators, come up with a script and theatre experience as old as the hills and as up to the minute as breaking news. It’s turkey-stuffed with politics and profanity, laughter and more laughter, sexual politics, and a heart-wrenching plea for kindness, community, and plain old, much-needed human love. A fabulous treat.” - Stage Noise

“Without a doubt, I’ve never heard as much applause or laughter in a theatre as I did during The Boomkak Panto… If the cast were to be summarised in one word, it would be superb.” - State of the Art

“Loud and joyous… genuinely hilarious.” - Suzy Goes See

“As Virginia Gay and Richard Carroll’s exuberant The Boomkak Panto shows, pantomime as a genre may be utterly bonkers and fundamentally nonsensical, but it offers audiences the possibility of irreverence, joy and, most importantly, community.” - The Conversation

Presented by Belvoir