Cold Feet creator Mike Bullen brings The Waiting Room to Mona Vale

Mike Bullen has spent 30 years writing television watched by millions. Now, the creator of hit British series Cold Feet is bringing things much closer to home - to a stage in Mona Vale.

The Newport-based writer is launching local theatre company NoBAD Theatre this October with its first production, The Waiting Room, after stumbling across a venue he didn’t even know existed.

“I was blown away,” Mike says of discovering the Mona Vale Performance Space, despite having lived just one suburb away for years. “It’s a great but underutilised venue. I thought, why not put on a play here? So I wrote one.”

Simple.

Well, perhaps not quite.

After a 30-year career in television, Mike admits he may have underestimated exactly how much work goes into starting a theatre company and staging a production from scratch.

But the idea took him back to what he loved about performing long before Cold Feet came along.

“When I think of the most fun I’ve had, I realise that it was at school and university - the sheer joy of putting on a show with like-minded people who you forged close friendships with,” he says.

“I wanted to rekindle that sense of fun that theatre offers.”

A family, a deathbed and plenty of unfinished business

The Waiting Room brings four siblings back to their childhood home, where their father Frank lies in a coma and close to death.

As they wait, the old family dynamic quickly returns.

There’s history, affection and plenty of awkwardness, along with all the unresolved family business that has a habit of resurfacing when everyone is suddenly back under the same roof.

Mike describes the play as warm, acerbic and recognisably human, finding humour in the complicated relationships between adult siblings and their parents.

While the story isn't autobiographical, Mike says his own experience of being with both of his parents when they died inevitably found its way into his understanding of the characters.

“I was fortunate enough to be at the bedside of each of my parents when they passed away,” he says, before adding in typical Mike fashion: “The police cleared me of any involvement.”

The idea itself has actually been hanging around for more than 30 years.

When Mike began looking for something that would work in the Mona Vale space, he remembered an old script he'd started decades ago and abandoned after about 30 pages. He threw most of it away and started again, creating an eight-person comedy designed for an intimate theatre setting that has attracted a cast with some very familiar faces.

You may recognise a few of them

Mike's friend, actor Julian Pulvermacher, was the first to come aboard as Frank. From there, introductions to other local actors began and the cast quickly grew.

And it's quite a line-up.

Raelee Hill has appeared in Australian favourites including Water Rats and Neighbours.

Gillian Alexy will be familiar to McLeod's Daughters fans and also spent years working in US television. Cassandra Magrath played Miranda Gibson in SeaChange and starred in Wolf Creek.

Then there's Chris Sadrinna, who appeared in 198 episodes of Home and Away as heartthrob Brad Armstrong.

Behind the scenes, NoBAD is bringing together people with vastly different levels of experience.

While the cast is professional, volunteers of all ages are working backstage. Some simply want to be involved in their local community, while younger crew members are gaining technical experience that could eventually lead to careers in the performing arts.

That's really the bigger idea behind NoBAD.

Mike doesn't just want to put on one play. He wants to create a local theatre community.

“I’d love it to become an established presence on the upper Northern Beaches,” he says.

“I’d like us to have a reputation for producing quality work, so that when people see that it’s a NoBAD production, they think it’s worth checking out.”

He'd particularly love a future production to be written and performed by young local creatives.

Although they shouldn't expect an easy ride.

“They better have something to say!” he says. “We won’t put on anything that doesn’t meet the high standard we’re determined to set with our first show.”

From 10 million viewers to a room in Mona Vale

There is something rather lovely about the creator of a television show whose finale was watched by 10 million people in Britain choosing to start again in a small theatre in Mona Vale.

Mike first moved to the Northern Beaches with his family in 2002, initially thinking Australia might be a one-year adventure.

One year became two. The family became Australian citizens. Eventually, there was no going back.

Except, as Mike puts it, they did.

The family returned to the UK in 2011 for his television career, but by then his children considered Australia home and missed their friends and beachside life.

They came back.

Mike spent another four years commuting between Australia and the UK while making series six to nine of Cold Feet, but since COVID he has been based here full-time.

“I still love the UK, and enjoy visiting, but I love leaving too, and getting home to Sydney!”

And after decades of television, theatre is giving him something even TV can't.

An audience sitting right there.

“In TV you have to wait for the reviews,” Mike says. “You can get instantaneous feedback on X, but you don’t know who’s writing it - some troll or Russian bot!”

“There’s no hiding in the theatre. The audience’s reaction is clear, and immediate. There’s no greater rush than hearing an audience laugh, or fall silent as they’re moved by something happening on stage.”

For The Waiting Room, that audience will be just down the road from home.

And it all started because Mike Bullen wandered into a local performance space and wondered why more wasn't happening there.

Now something is.

The Waiting Room will play five performances at Mona Vale Performance Space, Bungan Street, Mona Vale, from Wednesday 21 October to Saturday 24 October.

Evening performances begin at 7.30pm, with a Saturday matinee at 3pm. The play runs for approximately 80 minutes and tickets are $35 for adults, $30 for seniors and under 30s, and $25 for under 18s. Parental discretion is advised for language and references to sex and death.

More information is available through NoBAD Theatre, with tickets available via Humanitix.

Cast and Mike Bullen photography: Sam Lawrence Photography / @_samalawrencephoto. Rehearsal photography: Evie Scully/Northern Beaches Living.