The Fame Reporter interviewed Australian performer, singer, songwriter and satirist Denis Carnahan. By overwhelming demand, Denis is making a triumphant return to the stage this summer with his hilarious one-man cult hit musical comedy show, Cricket The Musical.
Playing in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney from November 2025 through to January 2026, Cricket The Musical will follow the English Cricket Team’s tour of Australia.
We talked to Denis about reviving his iconic Aussie Musical for new national audiences, his dream cricket player that would star alongside him, what people can learn from sport through the arts lense and more.
Welcome to The Fame Reporter Denis, you’re returning to the stage this summer with your one-man comedy hit Cricket The Musical. How does it feel to be bringing the show back by popular demand and taking it across Australia once again?
I’m really excited! The tour earlier this year was great fun, but this upcoming cricket season is going to be fascinating.
Doing the show around the Ashes test match schedule means there’s so much scope for the show to change and develop as the series goes on.
What first inspired you to merge your love of cricket, music, and satire into a full-blown musical? Was there a particular match or moment that sparked the idea?
Funnily enough – it was a Rugby League referees presentation night! I’d been writing sports satire songs for a while, mainly to deal with my disappointment when my team lost in various sports. I started making videos for the songs and playing at corporate functions, and trying to work out how to combine the songs into a single show. I was asked to play at an NRL Referees Presentation night, and decided to do the songs dressed as and impersonating (very loosely) a senior referee who was there.
I got the idea of doing all the songs as different characters, which allowed a lot of artistic freedom. It was a simple step to transfer that idea to all the cricket songs I’d written.
This upcoming season seems packed with drama — from the English team’s return to Bazball antics to the Big Bash theatrics. How do you go about turning those real-world cricket controversies into comedy gold for the stage?
I just listen, watch and read about all the villains and controversies and let my thoughts wander.
Every piece of sporting drama is a potential comic narrative.
If you think about them long enough, you can boil them down to their essence in a few words, a short phrase. Then it’s just matching music to the drama of that phrase, whether it be a parody song, or something that requires its own original melody and backing.
You’ve described the new tour as following the English Cricket Team’s visit to Australia. Without giving too much away, can you tease what audiences can expect from Cricket The Musical this time around?
They can expect a lot of material around the current series, which will be updated as the tour moves with the cricket. I’ll still have songs from the previous Ashes series after all the drama and questions around Moral Victories, The Spirit Of The Game and Australia being saved by the rain in Manchester (…I bless the rains down in Manchester…).
I’ve been compiling cricket songs for over a decade, and there are still a few of the old ones that have wonderful teeth, so they’ll be in the show too.
You’ve been called Australia’s hardest-working musical sports satirist. How do you keep your material so sharp and current, especially with the cricket world constantly serving up new scandals and surprises?
For me, that’s half the fun of it! Like I said above, I’m constantly refreshing the material. That keeps it fresh and challenging for me as a writer and performer, but it also means the old songs really earn their place, because recency bias gives the new and current songs an unfair advantage.
It’s so much fun singing a song I’ve written just before the show, about something that has only just happened. The hardest part is not sniggering through them, because they’re necessarily unrehearsed!
Your songs have become cult favourites on ABC, The Footy Show, and YouTube — from Stuart Broad’s sportsmanship to Mitchell Johnson’s moustache. Do you have a personal favourite parody or one that always gets the biggest audience reaction?
They’re all my favourites one way or another, but one of my favourite moments in the show comes during “Stevie” – the tribute song to Steve Smith. Obvs to the tune of Evie by Stevie Wright.
The audience reaction when it segues from Stevie Part 1 to Stevie Part 2 is always fun. And then bringing in a new Stevie Part 4 takes them by surprise too.
You mention that cricket offers more comic narratives than any librettist could dream of. In your opinion, what makes the sport such perfect material for musical theatre and satire?
How seriously people take it. How mad it drives people, especially fans who are so far removed from it. I’m one of them. I’ve stayed up loooong nights watching cricket matches overseas, and been devastated by results.
Test cricket especially seems to drive madness in the players. The mental and physical exertion, pressure and lack of sleep over a period of days, make it almost inevitable late in a game, a player will have insufficient oxygen to think properly and is going to do something stupid.
Exhibit A – the behaviour Stuart Broad after the Bairstow stumping, which he has confessed he regrets. Exhibit B – the behaviour of the entire crowd at Lords after the Bairstow stumping. I rest my case.
You’ll be performing across Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney through the summer. What are you most looking forward to about taking Cricket The Musical on tour?
I’m really looking forward to doing the show in Perth for the first time. I called the last tour “5 for 25 – The (almost) National Tour”.
I got a bunch of people from WA contact me berating me for not heading over there, and for having the audacity to call it a National tour when it was only Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra.
The possibility of touring English cricket fans coming to the show and booing and cheering at different times to the local crowd adds a lot of extra spice.
Your shows mix live music, video sketches, and caricatures — it’s more than just stand-up. How do you approach crafting that blend of multimedia performance?
It’s driven by fear! Cricket The Musical is a one man show, so I’m really exposed up there. I hate dead spots when I’m performing.
I do absolutely everything I can in prep to make sure there’s something going on all the time to engage and reward people who’ve been brave enough to come out to see it.
Many of your fans say your work brings people together over a shared love of sport and laughter. What do you hope audiences walk away feeling after seeing Cricket The Musical?
A smile, an appreciation that sport and the arts aren’t enemies, and a way of dealing better with their team losing, or if their team is winning, being kinder and more sympathetic to opposition fans.
Finally, Denis, if you could recruit one famous cricketer — past or present — to join you on stage for a duet, who would it be and why?
Apparently Australian test, ODI and T20 batter Phoebe Litchfield did a lot of musical theatre growing up. She already appears briefly on screen in Cricket The Musical via the wonderful footage from a WBBL match where she was attacked from above by some protective plovers!
I don’t yet know how, or in what form, or why she’d do it, but I’d love to do some sort of musical collaboration with Phoebe Litchfield, even though I would be utterly upstaged.
TICKETS
Perth – 19-20 November
Brisbane – 2 December
Adelaide – 14 December
Melbourne – 27-28 December
Sydney – 3-4, 9-10 January
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