The Lovers: Shakespeare Goes Pop

Has love changed over the last 400 years? That’s the question posed by Laura Murphy’s sparkling musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Lovers had its second production in Brisbane during September 2025, followed by a return to Sydney in October / November. David Spicer reports. 

“This must be the coolest adaptation of Shakespeare on the planet and judging by the buzz created at the World Premiere it’s on a trajectory to be seen in theatres around the globe.”

That was the opening of my review of Bell Shakespeare’s World Premiere production in 2022. Now the Australian written musical is having something which is sadly unusual for many locally written productions – a second production.

The team from Shake & Stir Theatre Company, the Brisbane based touring company which specialises in updating classics, has joined with producer John Frost for a commercial season.

The musical is tuneful, funny, and very passionate. Snippets of Shakespeare’s original verse are blended with a delicious mix of song styles from pop to hip hop, to soaring ballads.

Laura Murphy also loves teasing the audience with cheeky contemporary references. Adam Sandler's films and Taylor Swift’s lack of cool are somehow dropped into the lyrics. Some of the references are unashamedly aimed at a younger audience including a few which went over my middle-aged head. The urban slang RUDTF is tweaked to be RUDTL – are you down to love.

“What is so nice about the response to The Lovers is that it bridges the generational divide,” says Laura Murphy. “You can have a 15-year-old whispering to their grandparents, ‘What does doth now mean?’ You know, ‘What does Shakespearean language mean?’ 

“And then the grandparent can whisper to the 15-year-old, ‘What does DTF mean?’ So, it kind of brings people together.”

Instead of sub-titles to translate what the language means, Murphy uses pop music. 

“It acts as a translator of both the Shakespeare text and the modern vernacular, so that everybody understands what is happening, and we can tap into the inner voices of the characters through pop music.”

The Lovers is a slimmed down interpretation of Shakespeare’s most performed play, with six central characters. 

 “It focuses on the four young lovers,” Murphy explains. “In the original, you've got The Mechanicals, you've got Titania and the fairies, and a lot of different storylines. I just focus on the four lovers, and then Puck and Oberon, who create all the mischief.

“So, I get a bit more time with the characters, which means I can try to explore them a little further, and certainly explore how they can speak to today's world and today's messaging around romantic love.

“Oberon begins the show reminding the audience of the time before we had to swipe right to find our perfect match. It's referred to throughout the show.”

Murphy says a central theme is how much have romantic relationships changed over the last 400 years.

“Shakespeare wrote these characters hundreds of years ago, and yet they're still so relatable today.  Whether it’s flirting, romantic gestures or gender stereotypes, a lot of it has remained the same.

“We continue to make the same mistakes, have the same fears and vulnerabilities, and ultimately, I think, as a society, we do want to hold on to that very lovely idea that there is someone out there who's our other half and will complete us.

“But that's probably not a realistic way of looking at it, because I think we need a lot of different types of relationships and different types of love to be able to give us all the love and value and feeling of worth as a person.

“It can't just come from one person. And in fact, the idea that we're incomplete until we’ve found the one is a little bit dangerous.”

Jason Arrow, best known as the lead for the entire Australian season of Hamilton, is in the cast for the production. It’s an experience he jokes was either going to kill him or make him bullet proof.  Earlier this year he was larger than life in Opera Australia’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour season of Guys and Dolls. 

In The Lovers, Arrow’s character is Demetrius. He starts the play engaged to Hermia (Loren Hunter), who is in love with Lysander (Mat Verevis). However, a few doses of love potion play havoc with the direction of their affections.  

Arrow studied Shakespeare whilst at WAAPA but never got the chance to act  in a production.

“Demetrius is painted as the kind of the bad boy, which is not completely foreign to me so it’s going to be interesting to find out more about what that means.”

At the age of 35 he’s been part of the digital world’s way of starting a relationship but can also remember the good old days when those tools were not available. 

“I think it's easier (to find someone), but I don't think it's nearly as fulfilling. And by that I mean, for example, we're kind of conditioned to see that the grass is always greener on the other side.

“So, when you have such huge access to people generally in online dating, I think it makes people not willing to put the hours into their relationships. If a (relationship) has gotten slightly difficult or boring, there's so much choice out there that it's so easy to give someone the flick.

 “I think it actually makes things more difficult and a lot less fulfilling in a relationship context, because you're getting rid of that human connection that is required to make it work successfully.”

Laura also believes that electronic tools can make having meaningful relationships more difficult.

“Because our universe has almost gotten smaller in the way that it literally exists in our phone, our entire universe exists inside this small rectangle. And so, I think developing relationships and trying to connect with people that you don't know is hard.

“It's a vulnerable thing to try to build emotional intimacy with a stranger, even if it's over the course of months. We don’t exercise that muscle of emotional intimacy.”

There are no mobile phones or internet hook-ups in the musical.

Rather, as Murphy describes it, “Oberon (Stellar Perry), the ethereal rock star alien fairy, travels with the sole purpose of trying to give people their happily ever after, even in a world where we're struggling with human connection.”

Non-Shakespearean technology is used, however, in the sound and visuals. 

“I use synthesizers and drum machines when something artificial is happening in the story. When Oberon uses the love potion to manipulate characters to behave in a certain way, I up the synthetic nature of the score.

“When something a little more organic and purer is happening, I go back to more acoustic instruments.”

Set in a magical forest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has long been a delicious prospect for designers.

Bell Shakespeare’s original production of The Lovers, designed by future Tony Award winner Marg Horwell, featured cheeky sets of flowers, Christmas trees, swings and stuffed toys. The costumes shifted between funky contemporary and Elizabethan in gaudy colours.

The Shake & Stir Theatre Company has commissioned a new look.  

Expect to see an extraordinary video installation. David Bergman, who was nominated for a Tony Award for his work on The Picture of Dorian Gray (with Horwell), is on board as Video and Sound Designer.