Announcing Melbourne Theatre Company 2027 Season

The Scoop Melbourne Theatre Company Season 2027

Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director & CEO Anne-Louise Sarks today reveals the Company’s ambitious 2027 Season – eleven productions spanning bold new Australian work, sharp provocations on classics, compelling dramas and international hits.

Anne-Louise Sarks, Artistic Director & CEO of Melbourne Theatre Company, said:

“Season 2027 invites audiences to join us at the theatre for thrilling, moving and surprising storytelling. There’s a lot of fun in this season. It’s playful, it’s edgy and importantly, it asks us to look again at some of the stories we thought we knew.

Our new season highlights who we are: a company that backs Australian artists, commissions new Australian work and gives artists the support to continue making ambitious theatre from the ground up. Six of our eleven productions have been supported through our NEXT STAGE Writers’ Program and five are Melbourne Theatre Company commissions.

That investment in new work and artists is at the heart of everything we do. And alongside that, we’re bringing major international works to Melbourne – giving audiences the chance to experience some of the most exciting theatre on the global stage.”

Season 2027 highlights include:

Rachel Griffiths returns to Melbourne Theatre Company for the first time in 20 years, to star as the largely forgotten modernist painter Clarice Beckett in the world premiere of Clarice, a new work developed through a unique creative collaboration between Griffiths, AACTA Award-winning writer Trudy Hellier and multi-award-winning director Simon Phillips.

Actor and playwright Kate Mulvany embarks on a virtuosic one-person tour de force, embodying all the characters of Shakespeare’s Richard III, directed by Ian Michael. This new adaptation sheds a new light on the misunderstood Machiavellian figure, by interrogating the differing ways in which power is wielded by disabled and able-bodied individuals.

The Australian premiere of Stereophonic, the most Tony Award-nominated play in Broadway history, featuring an original score by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire.

The Australian premiere of John Proctor is the Villain, one of the most talked-about new plays in the world right now – seven Tony Award nominations, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and a feature film in development with Tina Fey and Sadie Sink attached. Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks.

A world premiere reimagining of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, adapted by award-winning Wirlomin Noongar writer Claire G. Coleman and co-created and directed by Joe Paradise Lui – turning the classic invasion story inside out by looking at it through a new lens.

A world premiere inspired by a real meeting between Bob Hawke, Kerry Packer and Clive Lloyd, in Julian Larnach’s Rebels, directed by Jessica Arthur.

A First Nations road trip crime caper, Dirty Diamonds, written and directed by Abbie-lee Lewis, inspired by the real Argyle diamond mine heist – a co-production with Belvoir, in association with Yirra Yaakin and RISING.

The whip-smart, big-hearted new musical spectacular, Phar Lap: The Electro-swing Musical, fresh from winning Best Production of a Musical at the Sydney Theatre Awards. It’s an all-singing, all-dancing ensemble with an infectious song list inspired by Duke Ellington and Daft Punk. Directed by Sheridan Harbridge.

A major new work from celebrated Lantana writer Andrew Bovell, Every Second Wednesday, directed by Sarah Goodes – a rare, deeply human story centring the parents, partners and siblings who love someone through addiction.

Sigrid Thornton, Nadine Garner and Erik Thomson to front Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance, directed by Iain Sinclair (West Gate).

The Australian premiere of The Authenticator by Winsome Pinnock – dubbed “the godmother of Black British playwriting” by The Guardian – directed by Zindzi Okenyo.

Melbourne Theatre Company’s Season 2027:

Stereophonic
25 January – 13 March
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Opening the year in the Sumner is Stereophonic, the most Tony Award-nominated play in Broadway history. Written by David Adjmi with an original score by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire, this play-with-music follows a band on the verge of a breakthrough, chasing the perfect take across a decade-defining album.

Directed by Daniel Evans (National Theatre Live: Our Generation), this co-production with Queensland Theatre Company and Belvoir St. Theatre features Geraldine Hakewill (Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries) and Alex Malone (The Killings at Parish Station).

Richard III
13 February – 20 March
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio

In the Fairfax Studio, one of Australia’s leading actors, Kate Mulvany (Hunters, The Twelve), adapts and delivers a landmark solo performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III – playing every character herself. Directed by Ian Michael (Troy), this reimagining promises to be a theatrical feast – human, darkly funny and heartbreaking. What if history’s greatest monster got to tell his own story, alone?

A Delicate Balance
3 April – 15 May
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Acclaimed actors of the stage and screen, Sigrid Thornton (Mother Play), Nadine Garner (The Doctor Blake Mysteries) and Erik Thomson (Packed to the Rafters), unite to star in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy, A Delicate Balance. Award-winning director Iain Sinclair (West Gate) returns to direct the story of a household that unravels when friends arrive fleeing an unnamed terror, bringing with him the same design team as A View from the Bridge.

The War of the Worlds
1 – 22 May
Southbank Theatre, The Lawler

Award-winning Wirlomin Noongar writer Claire G. Coleman (Terra Nullius) turns H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds inside out. In a bold new adaptation for the Company’s Education & Families program, co-created with and directed by Joe Paradise Lui (LEGENDS: of the Golden Arches) this production hands the history back to the people that lived it.

Few know that Wells drew inspiration from The Black War, the catastrophic colonisation of the Palawa people of Lutruwita, when writing the original 1898 novel. This new telling brings warmth, humour and theatricality to the stage, while inviting audiences to see a familiar story from a new perspective. Premiering in the Lawler Theatre, before embarking on a regional schools’ tour across Victoria.

Dirty Diamonds
22 May – 26 June
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio

A co-production with Belvoir, in association with Yirra Yaakin and RISING, Dirty Diamonds is a Blak, badass crime caper with shades of Thelma & Louise – with a better ending. Written and directed by Abbie-lee Lewis and inspired by the real Argyle diamond mine heist of the 1980s, it follows two First Nations women on a wild road trip from Perth to the Kimberley in search of answers, starring Lila McGuire (Goolagong) and Ruby Henaway (The Sapphires).

Rebels
5 June – 10 July
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Based on real events, Rebels imagines what was really said when Bob Hawke, Kerry Packer and Clive Lloyd met behind closed doors at Kirribilli House in 1985 – to decide the future of Australian cricket. It’s a moment that would become about more than sport; a moment where what a nation stands for is brought into question.

Written by Julian Larnach and directed by Jessica Arthur, this NEXT STAGE-supported new Australian work is a fast-moving, gripping three-hander and importantly, a local Australian story.

John Proctor is the Villain
5 July – 7 August
Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse

Artistic Director, Green Room Award-winning director Anne-Louise Sarks leads the Australian premiere of John Proctor is the Villain, one of the most talked-about new plays in the world. Kimberly Belflower’s electrifying reframing of The Crucible hands the story to the teenage girls at its margins – funny, fierce, and already headed for the big screen with a producing team that includes Tina Fey and Sadie Sink. Starring Masego Pitso (Is God Is).

The Authenticator
2 August – 4 September
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Direct from its premiere at London’s National Theatre, The Authenticator by Winsome Pinnock – celebrated by The Guardian as “the godmother of Black British playwrights” – is a gripping, comedy-infused mystery-thriller about a family inheritance and the secrets buried inside it.

Directed by Zindzi Okenyo (Destiny) and starring Mandy McElhinney (House of Hancock, Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War), Chika Ikogwe (Heartbreak High) and Brigid Zengeni (Interceptor, The Good Liar).

Phar Lap the musical arrives from the Hayes as part of a tour Photo by Vien Tran Coco Production

Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical
9 September – 16 October
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Fresh from winning Best Production of a Musical at the Sydney Theatre Awards, Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical brings the story of the ‘horse that stopped a nation’ to life with a score inspired by Duke Ellington and Daft Punk. Directed by Sheridan Harbridge (co-writer, My Brilliant Career), starring Joel Granger (Happiness), this joyous underdog tale had audiences clamouring for tickets at its sold-out Hayes Theatre Co premiere.

Every Second Wednesday
9 October – 13 November
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio

Highly regarded writer Andrew Bovell (Lantana, Strictly Ballroom) returns with Every Second Wednesday, directed by Sarah Goodes (Julia).

A rare and deeply human portrait of the people usually left out from stories of addiction – the parents, partners and siblings who keep showing up – starring Ian Bliss (The Black Woman of Gippsland), Diana Glenn (The Slap), Danielle Cormack (Wentworth, The Twelve) and Debra Lawrance (Home and Away, Please Like Me).

Clarice
2 November – 18 December
Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Closing the season, Rachel Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters, Muriel’s Wedding) returns to Melbourne Theatre Company for the first time in twenty years to star in the world premiere of Clarice. Griffiths will play one of Australia’s greatest early painters – modernist painter Clarice Beckett – all but forgotten after her death, until one woman refused to let her disappear from history.

This visually rich production invites audiences to see the world – and Melbourne – through Beckett’s eyes. It’s a unique artistic collaboration between acting and producing icon Rachel Griffiths, AACTA Award-winning writer Trudy Hellier and acclaimed director Simon Phillips. Also starring Katherine Tonkin (Macbeth, Crazy Fun Park), Darcy Kent (West Gate) and Richard Piper (Wentworth, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales).