Dangerous When Wet – The Musical, by Merran Hughes (writer/designer), Eliane Morel (writer/producer), Joanna Weinberg (composer/director) and Daryl Wallis (arranger/musical director), tells the story of Australians Fanny Durack and Mina Wylie, the first women ever to win Gold and Silver in a modern Olympic women’s swimming event at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

We’re performing this production at Randwick Town Hall from 8 to 18 October. Currently, we are are seeking grants, sponsorship and donations to put on our show, and every little bit helps… so if you’re interested in donating, you can make a tax-free donation via the Australian Cultural Fund, here:

Photos above by Jacquie Manning at the Randwick Town Hall Takeover version of Dangerous When Wet, June 22 2025

How it started… and progressed

Eliane and Merran are both residents of the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney with a strong connection to their local artistic communities, and have extensively researched Australian swimming history. In 2021/22, with assistance from Waverley and Randwick Councils, and in collaboration with Soledad Cordeaux and Vashti Hughes, they wrote a play, Dangerous When Wet, which focused on the stories of Mina Wylie and Fanny Durack – the lens of sport providing a view into the social, cultural, and technological shifts that were occurring as Australia began to transform into a modern nation.

Expanding on this research, Eliane and Morel put together a successful exhibition and lecture, ‘Sydney Mermaids’, on women swimming in the early 20th century, and featuring Fanny Durack, Mina Wylie, and Australia’s first Hollywood superstar, Annette Kellerman, as part of Heritage Week for Inner West Council. The research is now part of the Inner West library collection.

And then…

In 2024 Morel and Hughes successfully applied for a grant from Waverley Council to create a new musical, using the original play Dangerous When Wet as a starting point, but this time collaborating with musical theatre writer, Joanna Weinberg. The idea behind presenting the story as a musical was to allow for more characters to be introduced, and to give those characters the ability to outwardly express emotional depths, and to make the story fun, colorful and accessible to all.

With assistance from a Randwick Town Hall Takeover grant, we creatively developed the show with five performers and performed a shortened version of it on June 22 2025 at Randwick Town Hall. It’s a vaudeville styled, hilarious, touching story of triumph over adversity and the celebration of friendship.

But don’t take our word for it, listen to what audiences have said:

What are we doing now?

Now, we’re putting on a season of Dangerous When Wet: The Musical, at Randwick Town Hall, from the 8th to the 18th of October, 2026. You can buy tickets right now, but shhh! We haven’t officially launched them yet, so if you visit this site, you’ll be amongst the first…