John Frost – 'Frosty the Showman', a Broadway Tony award winner for 'The King and I' reborn in hometown Adelaide
John Frost won Tony awards for his work on The King and I and Hairspray on Broadway in New York. The King and I revival, starring Hayley Mills as Anna, came from Frost teaming with Tim McFarlane, then in charge of the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, in 1991.
Image courtesy AusTheatre.com
Adelaide-born John Frost – “Frosty the Showman” – as managing director of the Gordon Frost Organisation become one of Australia’s great impresarios, producing around 200 shows around the world.
He became his showbiz career in Adelaide at 16 as a dresser on the J.C. Williamson tour of Mame and worked his way up from there. He founded Gordon Frost Organisation with Ashley Gordon in 1983. They produced shows including Jerry’s girls, Night mother, The Venetian twins and Women behind bars. That progressed to national tours of large-scale musicals such as Big River, The King And I, South Pacific, Hello, Dolly!, The Secret Garden, Smokey’s Joe’s Café, Cabaret and Crazy For You.
A major turning point for Frost was teaming with Tim McFarlane, then in charge of the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, to produce The King and I in 1991. The $2 million revival, starring Hayley Mills as Anna, opened in Adelaide and played to packed houses across Australia, before transferring to Broadway with Donna Murphy and Lou Diamond Phillips in the lead roles. There, the production won a Tony award for best revival of a musical and scored 780 performances before heading to the London Palladium in 2000 with Elaine Paige and Jason Scott Lee and £8 million in advance ticket sales.
In 2003, Frost won his second Tony award as a producer of Hairspray on Broadway. This had followed shows such as The Sound of Music with Lisa McClune, Annie with Anthony Warlow, Man of La Mancha, The Wizard of Oz and Footloose.
With The Really Useful Company Asia pacific, he presented the Australia tour of The Phantom of the Opera, starring Anthony Warlow, as well a being involved with Australian productions of The Producers, Grease, Chicago, Doctor Zhivago and Wicked, Fame the M usical and Legally blonde.
In London, he coproduced The bodyguard and Blithe Spirit as well as Blithe spirit, An act of God and Fiddler on the roof in the United States of America. Besides his musicals, Frost also presented plays including Art starring Tom Conti, and the National Theatre of Great Britain’s An inspector calls and Driving Miss Daisy with Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones.
Coming through the darkened theatre days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Gordon Frost Organisation reveived to stage musicals such as My Fair Lady, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Shrek, Book of Mormon, Chicago and Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 the Musical . It also collaborated with Opera Australia to revive The Secret Garden.