Bluey's Big Play

A Brisbane cartoon handed to an Adelaide theatre company

Bluey's Big Play is not an episode of the television series staged. It came out of a collaboration between the cartoon's makers and Windmill Theatre Co, the Adelaide children's theatre company, and its script is an original story written for the stage by series creator Joe Brumm. Joff Bush, who scores the show on screen, wrote new music for it. Rosemary Myers directed, with Jonathon Oxlade designing and Jacob Williams as puppetry director.

Development started in March 2020, which turned out to be the worst possible month to begin. The premiere had been set for May and was postponed. Rehearsals moved from Melbourne to Adelaide and then to Canberra as restrictions shifted. Myers has described the care taken in turning flat, drawn characters into three-dimensional objects, and the production trained two casts so it could still play venues where full capacity had not yet been permitted.

The premiere that reopened a full theatre

It opened at QPAC's Playhouse in Brisbane on 22 December 2020 as part of the Out of the Box festival, and was reported at the time as the first premiere of a professional play in a full-capacity theatre anywhere since the pandemic began that March. Theatres were deep-cleaned between performances. The show ran at QPAC until 10 January 2021, and in that first form lasted about 40 minutes.

An Australian national tour of some 50 towns and cities followed, and the production then went further out than most children's theatre manages. By the time its 2026 dates were announced, the producers were citing more than two million admissions across Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Europe, Spain, Singapore, South Africa, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates. It is produced by BBC Studios and Andrew Kay in association with Windmill Theatre Co, with Cuffe and Taylor involved on the British dates.

What the play is

The plot is small on purpose. Bandit wants to sit in his bean bag and look at his phone; Bluey and Bingo hide the phone and pull him into a game instead. Running underneath it is a strand about sisterhood, with Bluey irritated by Bingo copying everything she does. Chattermax appears, so do the grannies, and there is a hit-and-run in a toy car. The current running time is around 50 minutes with no interval, and Windmill's own guidance puts the age range at two upwards.

The characters are life-size puppets worked by handlers who stay visible; reviewers have counted two or three operators per figure depending on the character. Oxlade's set is modular and switches between the Heeler street, living room, bedroom and garden, pitched close enough to the cartoon that children recognise the rooms. There is no live dialogue: the voices are pre-recorded by the television cast, with Dave McCormack as Bandit and Melanie Zanetti as Chilli. A filmed version of the stage production has also been made available on ABC iview in Australia.

What critics have said

Time Out's theatre editor Andrzej Lukowski gave it four stars at the Royal Festival Hall over Christmas 2023, logging it at 55 minutes with tickets at £17 to £37. He liked that it was less reverent than most screen-to-stage adaptations, and singled out the wordless opening with ibises on stage and a game of musical statues played as an origin story for the cartoon's title sequence. His complaint was length: the piece is brisk, there are no padding songs and little audience interaction, and he wanted roughly ten more minutes of story.

Karen Bussell, reviewing the Lyric at Theatre Royal Plymouth for British Theatre Guide during its 29 May to 2 June 2024 dates, called it mischief with a message and noted the dialogue carries enough wit to hold adults. She also identified a dip around the half-hour mark in the quieter, reflective stretch — the structural cost of extending a seven-minute format to a theatre bill. The production was nominated for an Olivier Award for best family show in 2024.

Audience-facing reviews from the current touring version are warmer about engagement than about structure. A reviewer covering the Lowry run on 23 May 2026, attending for a second time after seeing it in 2024, reported constant laughter and cheering from the children and described the inflatable-ball and bubble finale as the part the room had come for.

Where it stands in late 2026

The 2026 British and Irish tour was the biggest the show has run here: 18 venues from the Grand Opera House in York on 19–22 March through Sunderland Empire, Curve in Leicester, the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend, the Marlowe in Canterbury, Belfast Waterfront, Wales Millennium Centre, Sheffield Lyceum, the Lowry in Salford on 22–31 May, Venue Cymru, the Edinburgh Playhouse, Liverpool's M&S Bank Arena, the Brighton Centre, Aylesbury Waterside, Wolverhampton Grand, Bournemouth Pavilion and Bristol Beacon, finishing at the 3Olympia in Dublin on 20–30 August. London was served by Wimbledon New Theatre on 30 July to 2 August, following what Cuffe and Taylor's Ben Hatton described as a popular festive season in the capital. Presale opened on 26 March and general sale on 27 March 2026.

The American leg went on sale earlier the same month, with a newsletter presale on 11 March 2026 and general sale on 13 March. Confirmed engagements include the Clay Center in Charleston on 28–29 July 2026, and tour listings run the North American dates from October 2026 into the spring of 2027. In Australia the show returns to Her Majesty's Theatre in Adelaide on 6–9 January 2027.

The wider franchise is moving in the same direction. Disney used its D23 showcase on 14 August 2026 to release a teaser trailer and poster for The Bluey Movie, a CG-animated feature written and directed by Brumm for Ludo Studio and BBC Studios, with Zanetti and McCormack returning as Chilli and Bandit, due in cinemas on 6 August 2027. The stage show, which predates the film by seven years, will still be touring when it lands.