From Blame It On the Boogie to Bridge Over Troubled Water, from the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys, hits from some of the most popular music groups of the 20th century are featured in Boys in the Band. Writer-director David Malek says the show was created in Australia five years ago with an all-Australian cast and has been touring the world for the past four years, since its international debut in a two-week season at the Mandela Theatre in South Africa.

One of the song sequences in the show is by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, so it's apt that group was, indirectly, the inspiration for Boys in the Band.

Malek was born in Canada and appeared in theatrical productions in the West End in London including Aspects of Love and Les Miserables. He met an Australian woman while they were touring in another show, The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and they married and moved to Australia in 2000. They have three children.

For the past 15 years Malek has operated his own company, SMA Productions, creating, producing and sometimes appearing in shows including The Rat Pack in which he plays Frank Sinatra.

As for the genesis of Boys in the Band, the longtime theatrical actor, director and producer, says, "I was in London in the West End at Jersey Boys, which I loved, and I thought, 'What a great idea: four guys telling the story of the music we've loved all these years."

He came up with the idea of having four singers sing the songs and tell the stories of some of the major male singing groups from the 1950s to the present, from the doo-wop days of the Drifters and the Platters through to the surf-rock of the Beach Boys, the Motown groove of the Jackson 5 and the latterday pop sound of That That.

To bring his idea to life, he decided to undertake a classic boy-band producer's ploy and create his own group through auditions. It wasn't just the ability to sing and dance he was seeking.

"They needed to be incredibly good-looking and versatile," he says – the latter being necessary given the wide range of music they would be required to sing over the course of the show.

The show's cast members – all in their 20s – are Simon McLachlan, a National Institute of Dramatic Arts graduate and former Jersey Boys cast member, Mat Verevis, a Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts graduate who was a finalist on The Voice, Tom Struik, who's 21 and has been with the show for three years ("We gave him his break") and Nana Matapule, an original cast member who was part of the 2013 South African tour.

Malek, whose shows range from rock to opera, says while it can be tough trying to be an independent producer, he enjoys the artistic freedom he has working for himself instead of being in somebody else's production where, "at the end of the day, you're an employee: you get a job and you do it. This is far more creative – I write, direct, and conceive the show."