children – three boys, three girls. Sent away from Havana by their parents in the first year of  Castro’s regime, to live among strangers in the USA.  Would they ever see their parents or their homeland again? Who would take that gamble with innocent young lives? And why?

The six in ‘Castro’s Children’ are fictional, but they represent the 14,048 real children who were sent out of Cuba under ‘Operation Pedro Pan’, a collaboration between the CIA and the Catholic Church that changed the lives of those children and their parents forever: some for good; some not.

‘Castro’s Children’ is set in Cuba and America in the early 1960s and 1980s – but its story is a universal one. It could be set anywhere, at any time, where children’s lives are displaced by adult wars and ideologies.

Music Theatre Melbourne is proud to present the Premiere Season of a brilliant new Australian musical: its score, by Simon Stone, is a treasure-house of riches; the book, by Peter Fitzpatrick, might make you laugh, might make you cry – but it will certainly make you care.

The outstanding adult cast consists of FEM BELLING, ZAK BROWN, MADELEINE FEATHERBY, BRYCE GIBSON, TOM GREEN, DREW LANE, TOD STRIKE, NOAH SZTO, DAISY VALERIO, GABRIELLE WARD, PAUL WATSON and LAURA WONG. Supporting them is a startlingly talented child-cast of fifteen: STEPHANIE ADAMSON, ARIA  ANINIPOC, SASHA BABUSHKIN, KAYLEE BAULK, BESSIE BLAZE, ELLIOT FRANKENI, CHASE KENDALL,  SCARLETT MAY, ARCHIE MENDELSSOHN, LIRA MOLLISON, JAYLEN NAGLOO, DANIEL NUNAN, LIA SCANTLEBURY, COCO SHELMERDINE and CAMPBELL VAN ELST.

‘Castro’s Children’ contains references to adult themes and low-level coarse language.