60 Years of Mackay Musicals

Hannah Lewis shares remarkable memories from a Queensland Community Theatre Company. 

This year marks a momentous occasion for the Mackay Musical Comedy Players (MMCP) as we celebrate six decades of bringing joy, creativity, and community spirit to the Mackay region. 

The company’s first production, The Boyfriend (pictured above) in 1965 was a resounding success. The receipts amounted to ₤877, making a fifty percent profit, after the founders scraped together money from their credit accounts to buy the set and costumes. Backdrops were painted in committee members’ backyards, surrounded by cockatoos and chickens. 

For thirty-five years the company performed in what a pioneer described as the “delightfully grotty” Mackay Theatre Royal, which was demolished in 1990 to make way for the Mackay Entertainment Centre. 

The Royal was not sound-proofed, and microphones weren’t used, so the performers needed strong voices to combat the noise from the greyhound races on a Thursday night and the wailing of sirens every time the Fire Brigade was called out. To get from one side of the stage to the other you had to go outside of the building, which was utter chaos when it rained.

Image: Les Misérables - 1994.

In 1975, before the show opening on the first night of West Side Story, two policemen came up the back stairs and said that there was a bomb threat and everyone had to evacuate. A caller said the lights would explode at the beginning of the second act. 

After interval, one of the policemen stood behind the lighting desk and watched as the operator brought the lights up before commenting, “Well, it looks alright to me.”

In the late seventies the committee was hard at work on plans for the construction of The Players “own home”.  Through their hard work, The Players dream was realised, with the official opening on 1st April 1978.

That decade The Players “went on tour”, taking productions to neighboring towns in response to pleas from theatre-lovers who had long been starved for musical theatre.

An 80 strong cast, props, costumes, lighting equipment, musical instruments, sets and most awkward of all, a complete revolving stage set for Calamity Jane hit the road for Bowen. 

Image: The Addams Family - 2023

In 1984, during Annie Get Your Gun, our leading lady, Shannon Edwards lost her singing voice twenty-four hours before opening night. Luckily our musical director, Elizabeth Carey, was able to sing the part from the pit with Shannon miming the words from the stage.

During 2012’s The Sound Of Music, in a moment of true showmance, our Captain Von Trapp, Petar Grulovic, proposed to Jessica Krause (who had played Maria) as the curtain fell after the final performance, bringing tears to the eyes of many of the cast and delighting “their children” from the production.

COVID brought similar problems to Mackay as it did to theatres world-wide. In 2020, our production of Mamma Mia! was only six weeks into rehearsals when it ground to a halt.

Just when we started to feel theatre was getting back to normal, COVID outbreaks flared again in 2022, and our production of Shrek became tricky, with cast members agreeing to understudy every role in the show as mandatory isolation regulations were reintroduced. 

Image: Footloose - 2025

2025 has been a year of reflection and triumph. 

https://www.mackaymusicalcomedyplayers.com/