Nineties fiends, speed demons and comedy lovers unite! After six long years, award-winning comedy Speed: The Movie, The Play is set to return to Fringe World, with its 60-minute loving homage to the 1994 action thriller Speed. Set on an actual bus, Speed: The Movie, The Play will hit Speed Bus at The Pleasure Garden from Wednesday, January 21, to Sunday, February 15, with tickets on sale now. Bec Weldon met with producer and co-writer Natalie Bochenski to talk about all things Speed, the 90s and old buses!
Hi Natalie! Thanks for chatting with us! You’re returning to Perth for the first time since 2020 with your show Speed: The Movie, The Play. What do you have in store for audiences this year?
Big laughs! I don’t think this show would have the longevity it does without its particular brand of ridiculous charm. It’s a high-octane, low-fi rollercoaster of a show that encourages audiences to embrace the silliness.
We’ll mark 250 performances this season, and I can’t think of a better place to do that than in The Pleasure Garden.
A Keanu Reeves action thriller, dripping in glorious 90s imagery and energy, is always a no-brainer, but what drew you specifically to the film and inspired the play, and set it on a real bus, no less!
We—co-writers Dan Beeston, Gregory Rowbotham and I—were kicking around ideas for how to make a show that combined our favourite elements of both scripted and unscripted theatre. We all loved the movie Speed but thought there’s no way we’d ever find a decent vintage bus on which we could recreate the movie as a comedy play. Turns out—that was the easiest thing to organise, so we had no excuse not to create the show!
We’re having a huge resurgence of 90s pop culture at the moment! While you were ahead of the curve, debuting the show over ten years ago, what do you think keeps people coming back to that period and aesthetic?
The power of nostalgia is strong! The nineties was not without its issues, but as someone who was a teen back then, it does feel sometimes like the 21st century took some wild turns into a very different timeline.
The show takes place on a pretty gorgeous vintage bus! Can you tell us about the story of the bus and the awesome partnership you have with the Bus Preservation Society of Western Australia?
Creating this show introduced us to the wonderful work of historic bus preservation societies. These are generally former drivers and mechanics dedicated to saving and restoring these beautiful vehicles. BPSWA has an incredible workshop out at Whiteman Park—definitely worth a visit! A portion of all ticket sales will go to BPSWA to help their work. We’re using a glorious Mercedes-Benz bus that served the people of Perth from 1977 to 2000, and the BPSWA has given her a fantastic glow-up, with a fresh coat of paint to make her green, red and white livery shine!
That sounds awesome! And you have an all-Perth cast to fill it this year; is that right?
Yes, and what a cast! It’s wonderful to work with a new bunch of creatives and see what they bring to the controlled chaos of the show.
Approaching 250 shows is an amazing milestone! Even with a show as engaging as Speed, how do you, as a creative, and the greater team in general, keep yourselves engaged with the material and approach each night fresh and new?
This show is immersive and relies on the audience literally and figuratively jumping on board. We give audience members jobs to do to help Keanu save the day. So we have expectations of what might happen, but audiences have a wonderful tendency to subvert those! I’ve never had a dull night with this show, and the creativity and energy of the passengers keeps it endlessly fun. Engaging with a new cast and seeing them make the show their own is also a delight.
If you could set a high-octane action thriller on another mundane transportation system, what would you choose and why?
Well, our successor show to Speed: The Movie, The Play was Titanic: The Movie, The Play—although the most famously doomed ocean liner is hardly mundane. But we’d love to know if people would like to see that show at Fringe World!
Speed: The Movie, The Play will hit Speed Bus at The Pleasure Garden from Wednesday, January 21 to Sunday, February 15, 2026. Tickets are on sale now from fringeworld.com.au
