Christie Whelan Browne is one of Australia’s most versatile performers, delighting audiences on both our stages and screens, most recently in musicals Muriel’s Wedding and Kimberley Akimbo, and on popular TV shows Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell and Colin from Accounts. In between her busy schedule, she has garnered acclaim for her solo shows including Britney Spears the Cabaret and Life in Plastic.
Following the success of Britney Spears the Cabaret in UMAC’s inaugural year, Whelan Browne is set to return to the Union Theatre with Show People, a work she describes as a "bittersweet love letter" to the industry.
“It is one of my favourite shows to perform,” she says. “It makes me happy, challenges me, makes people laugh. Barry Humphries said to me after he saw it ‘you make what we do seem so sad.’ I replied: ‘Sometimes it is?’”
Show People reunites Whelan Browne with her Britney Spears the Cabaret collaborators Dean Bryant and Mathew Frank, the award-winning team now responsible for the hit musical adaptation of My Brilliant Career.
“Dean and Mat have such faith in me. That’s the number one reason why our shows have succeeded in the ways they have. They write for a version of me that I am able to rise to because they think I can.”
The first iteration of Show People, then titled Pure Blonde, debuted at Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2015. By 2022, a revised production appeared at Chapel off Chapel and Sydney Festival earning critical accolades. At the time, ArtsHub wrote: “There really are no people like show people – and Whelan Browne, Bryant and Frank are three of the best.”
For Whelan Browne, this return is less of a nostalgia trip and more of a new exploration of the work.
“The show remains the same, but what has changed is me,” she says, reflecting on the time that has passed since the work’s original premiere. “A decade of growth and life changes the way you perform a piece. I don’t even know what it will be like yet.”
Much like Britney Spears the Cabaret, Show People oscillates between joyful comedy and a piercing poignancy. But where Britney extrapolated on the audience’s existing relationship with a global pop icon, Show People introduces a carousel of original characters ranging from a wide-eyed newcomer to the world-weary diva.
“The show is a 70-minute steam train that takes off and doesn’t stop,” explains Whelan Browne. “Audiences can expect laughter and darkness too.”
Despite the industry’s challenges and that "sadness" that Humphries noted after seeing the show, Whelan Browne remains steadfastly committed to the business of show, “the only thing in life that ever came naturally” to her.
“Even though I never trained, I just innately understood it. There are not many places in life I feel that way, and that is the most special feeling to me.”
In the end, Whelan Browne hopes the audience walks away with a deeper appreciation for the grit required to produce the glamour. While the show is “ultimately funny and uplifting”, it is an invitation to see the industry – and the people who inhabit it – with all their flaws and fire.
“There really is ‘no business like show business’. There is so much more that you don’t see when you look at the shiny finished product on stage.”
Show People plays at the Union Theatre for one night only, 20 February 2026. Book now.
