Bloomshed makes it to centre stage with comedy classic

For a theatre company started in the backyard shed of a suburban rental, it's fitting that Bloomshed has made it to the main stage with a comedic take on Australia's housing crisis.

With its acclaimed adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the love story of Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet becomes not only a romance, but a tale of housing security.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the classic novel has had more adaptations than there are marriageable Bennet sisters, with a Netflix version out later in 2026, but Bloomshed's version has got to be among the most original.

For starters, Mr Bennet is played by a pot plant, and forgotten middle child Mary is going through a goth phase.

The show premiered at Melbourne's Darebin Arts Centre in 2025, followed by sold-out runs in Geelong and Canberra.

Now the company has its first main-stage production at Melbourne's Malthouse, a venue co-director James Jackson had long hoped Bloomshed would one day perform at.

"We've been at it for 10 years, and we were always of the belief that as long as we kept going, we would reach our dreams," he told AAP.

Bloomshed has been running since 2012, and started in the backyard shed of a rental house in the Melbourne suburb of Carnegie.

Jackson and his friends crammed an audience of 50 inside for an illegally staged show, thus creating the ultimate pedigree for an indie theatre company.

They must have had a patient landlord: for a production of Antigone, they filled the shed with pool salt and blew the building's electrical circuits, Jackson said.

Bloomshed's run at the Malthouse demonstrates the company's success since then, not to mention its adaptation of Animal Farm at Arts Centre Melbourne in August.

Rather than Orwell's critique of Russian totalitarianism, Bloomshed's Animal Farm takes aim at Australian crony capitalism, with the second half of the show set at a Senate estimates hearing.

Despite the company's brave comedic aim and its success with audiences, its 14 members all work other jobs, according to Jackson, a schoolteacher in the town of Euroa.

"We're tragically underfunded ... every single one of us is working jobs outside of the arts in some capacity, often in education," he said.

Pride and Prejudice plays the Malthouse's Merlyn Theatre until May 23.