Music Theatre

Mathew Frank is a Melbourne-based director and composer.

Mathew was Music Director of the smash-hit Melbourne Theatre Company production The Drowsy Chaperone (starring Geoffrey Rush) earlier this year. He has been Associate Musical Director on the MTC productions of Poor Boy, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (STC remount), Urinetown (STC remount) and Assistant Musical Director on The Sapphires.

With writing partner Dean Bryant, he composed Prodigal, produced in Melbourne in 2000 (Green Room Award – Best Original Score), then off-Broadway at the York Theatre Company in 2002, the first Australian musical produced in NYC. Mathew was Musical Director off-Broadway (cast recording available on JAY Records and iTunes).

The duo’s most recent musical was the premiere of Pratt Prize-winning Once We Lived Here at 45 Downstairs in September, for which they won the Green Room Award this year for Best New Musical. Other musicals include Virgins: A Musical Threesome (CUB Malthouse premiere, NYMF Invited Show and Victorian tour), The People in Your Pocket (Centenary of Federation Tour), The Silver Donkey (American tours 2006 and 2008), Jumpin’ the Q (Old Fitz, AWGIE nom), The Virgin Wars (Next Wave Festival) and Rock Me Galileo (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne 2009), Wipeout and Dollars and Sense (both touring nationally this year).

A retrospective of their work was part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival called ‘All Roads Lead to Home’, as well the exhibition ‘Making a Song and Dance’ at the Victorian Arts Centre.

Most recently Mathew was Musical Director/Arranger of ‘Tegrity: Britney Spears Live in Cabaret for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, which played Sydney in October (nominated for Best Cabaret at the Sydney Theatre Awards) and is playing Melbourne in October. He is Head of Music for the Childrens Performing Company of Australia, for whom he is musically directing Spring Awakening at the National Theatre in 2011.

Mathew will musically direct the Australian premiere of the Pulitzer-prize winning musical Next To Normal for the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2011.

Casey Bennetto is an award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster. He wrote the musical KEATING!, hosts the program Superfluity on Melbourne’s 3RRR, and has appeared in places as diverse as ABCTV’s Spicks and Specks, the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at Sydney Opera House.

Born in 1969, Bennetto spent his formative years amongst the fragrant meadows and blossoming malls of Greensborough, Melbourne.

He made his way to university, procured a BA and worked variously as a proofreader, a copywriter, an IT specialist and as the lead singer in the band Skin, which garnered national commercial airplay for their 1994 EP, Waking Up With You.

As part of the ‘Drowsy Drivers’ project, in 2004 Casey wrote a musical theatre biography of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, KEATING!.

In late 2008, Casey premiered a new project as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival: A Largely Fanciful History Of The Spiegeltent, in which he also starred; he also wrote and performed in 2009's Evening and provided the songs for the ever-threatening Christmas pantomime The Terminativity in 2010–11. He served as dramaturge on Eddie’s Shane Warne: The Musical as well as making contributions to Company B’s The Adventures Of Snugglepot And Cuddlepie and Die Roten Punkte’s Super Musikant and Kunst Rock.

He scored both series of Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar's Lowdown and was nominated for an AACTA with Shellie Morris and Tim Cole for work on the 2014 musical documentary Prison Songs. He appeared with Alan Brough as underappreciated alternative rock icons The Narelles in 2015, and has hosted A Swingin' Bella Christmas for the past five years. He has hosted The Show Of The Year for the Wheeler Centre since the show's inception in 2013.

Most recently, he scored the ABC TV series Get Krack!n and is currently working on several things at once, obviously to the detriment of all of them.

Casey has also hosted a regular show on 3CR, worked extensively for PBS FM and made many appearances on 774 ABC Melbourne as host, co-host and guest.

His appearances on ABC TV’s Spicks And Specks resurface occasionally to shame him.