An announcement that deserves to go straight to the pool room: the beloved Australian comedy The Castle is set to become a play, written by the team behind the original film.
Working Dog’s Rob Sitch, Tom Gleisner, Santo Cilauro and Jane Kennedy will write and co-produce the new theatrical production, which will again tell the story of the Kerrigan family and their fight against the Australian government to save their home from being bulldozed to make way for an airport expansion.
The Castle, released in 1997, is regarded as one of the greatest Australian films ever made and is even studied in some Australian secondary schools. Starring Michael Caton as the affable patriarch Darryl Kerrigan, The Castle shaped the Australian vernacular with much-quoted lines including, “This is going straight to the pool room” – a place of pride in the Kerrigan household – “How’s the serenity?” and “Tell him he’s dreamin’.”
The play will premiere in Melbourne at Her Majesty’s Theatre in March 2027, to mark the 30th anniversary of the film.
In a joint statement Sitch, Gleisner, Cilauro and Kennedy said they had wanted to turn The Castle into a stage show for “the best part of 25 years” and said the production would not be “just a retelling of the story but a quarter of a century of funny updates”.
“We wrote this new, fully updated show in the same way that we wrote the film screenplay all those years ago – the four of us in a room trying to make each other laugh. Our goal was to capture the warmth and humour (dare we say, ‘the vibe’?) of the original story in a way that will hopefully resonate with new and long-term fans alike.”
Producer Michael Cassel said: “When the team at Working Dog first approached me about bringing The Castle to the stage, I knew we had to do this.
“The film miraculously captures the specificities of Australian life and yet feels so universally true; family love, the challenges change presents, and the warmth and humour and dignity of ordinary people standing up for what matters. It makes you laugh, and then, before you know it, it makes you cry.
“That is exactly what live theatre does at its best and why The Castle was always destined for the stage.”
Casting for the production has yet to be announced.
