Music Theatre Melbourne is excited to announce the world premiere of Castro’s Children in July 2024.

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Six 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? Why take that gamble with innocent young lives?

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 …

The only ‘real’ characters in the show are the two men – one an idealistic school principal, one an enthusiastic parish priest – who directed the scheme. What did they, and the parents they advised, make of what they had done?

‘Castro’s Children’ is set in Cuba and America in the early 1960s and 1980s – but its story could be set anywhere, at any time, where children’s lives are displaced by adult wars and ideologies. Its reach is universal, and in suburban Albert Park, Music Theatre Melbourne is very proud to be staging its world premiere.

This is 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!

An outstanding adult cast of twelve and a startlingly talented child-cast of fifteen will ensure that you will never forget meeting ‘Castro’s Children’.