Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Mitchell Butel has announced the Company’s 2027 Season, his second since taking on the role.
Throughout 2027, across its three venues, STC will present thirteen productions including four world premieres of new Australian writing and six Australian premieres.
The 2027 season will be bookended by two international hits at Roslyn Packer Theatre: opening in January, the Australian premiere of Robert Icke’s contemporary adaptation of OEDIPUS with beloved stars Heather Mitchell and Richard Roxburgh performing together on stage for the first time in thirty years; and closing with the Sydney premiere of the Old Vic Production of Jack Thorne’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL starring Tim Minchin.
World premieres include an adaptation of Jenny Hocking’s THE PALACE LETTERS by Melanie Tait starring Georgie Parker as Hocking and Jonathan Biggins as Gough Whitlam; an adaptation of Pip Williams’ THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO by Verity Laughton; MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES: DEATH BY DECKCHAIR, a brand-new story in the Miss Fisher catalogue written by Deb Cox, co-creator of the original hit series with Fiona Eagger; and 2026 Patrick White Playwrights Award winner, Disapol Savetsila’s AMAH AND NANNA.
Australian premieres include Celeste Barber making her STC debut in THE BOOK OF LIZ by Amy Sedaris and David Sedaris; a new Australian production of Simon Stephens’ West End and Broadway hit VANYA starring Eryn Jean Norvill; Gina Gionfriddo’s Tony Award-winning BECKY SHAW starring Andrea Demetriades and directed by Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Mitchell Butel; and JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN, directed by Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director Anne Louise Sarks.
Other productions include the return of Kip Williams’ Olivier and Tony Award-winning THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY starring Nikki Shiels; David Ireland’s two-hander THE FIFTH STEP starring Ashan Kumar and Erik Thomson; and direct from State Theatre Company South Australia, Butel’s final commission, Jacob Boehme’s LOGAN ST.
Butel says that a common theme throughout the stories in the 2027 season is the notion of family and community and that the ‘‘constellation of stars’’ and theatrical brilliance on offer for audiences in 2027 are experiences that AI will ‘’never match’’:
‘’AI cannot do what these artists can do live on stage, and it will never be able to match the brilliance, complexity and immediacy that is created in a theatre.
Working in unison with our teams of award-winning and top-drawer creatives, our 2027 stars will bring to life thirteen magnificent theatrical stories that speak directly to the time and place in which we find ourselves – international hits, beloved classics reimagined and reborn, dramas that feel fresh as the morning and comedies that capture the zeitgeist consummately.
Throughout the diversity of viewpoints, voices, history and entertainment we will bring you in 2027, many of the stories explore family: how they shape us, how some families are chosen, how they can hurt us, but also how they can heal.
Families are also made when we create theatre. The community of staff and creators at STC is something to behold, working together to create brilliant theatre for our other family – our community of audiences.”
OEDIPUS
Created by Robert Icke After Sophocles
Scenic Designer Hildegard Bechtler Costume Designer Wojciech Dziedzic Lighting Designer Natasha Chivers Sound Designer Tom Gibbons Video Designer Tal Yarden Revival Director Lizzie Manwaring Associate Video Designer Taylor Edelle Stuart
With Samuel Brewer, Maggie Dence, John Gaden, Heather Mitchell, Richard Roxburgh and more to be announced.
27 Jan – 28 Feb 2027, Roslyn Packer Theatre
Richard Roxburgh and Heather Mitchell reunite on the Sydney Theatre Company stage for the first time in 30 years in this unmissable Olivier and Tony Award-nominated adaptation by one of the most exciting talents in British theatre.
Director-writer Robert Icke (1984, Oresteia, The Doctor) has triumphed in the West End and on Broadway with his “electrifying” (The New York Times) reimagining of the Oedipus myth as a contemporary political thriller. Now Sydney Theatre Company and Adelaide Festival bring this landmark theatrical event to Australia.
It’s election night, and the count has begun. Triumph looms for Oedipus (Roxburgh), a landslide imminent. His wife (Mitchell) has brought his nearest and dearest together for an evening that will transform this family forever. The family is close, the marriage strong and loving, but this tight-knit unit is about to be rocked to its core.
“A suspenseful and exhilarating political thriller that leaves your jaw on the floor” (USA Today), Oedipus will leave you breathless as it hurtles down the tracks like a runaway train.
LOGAN ST
Written and directed by Jacob Boehme
Designer Kathryn Sproul Lighting Designer Nic Mollison Composer & Music Director Dale Cornelius Sound Designer Patrick Pages-Oliver Video Designer Mark Oakley Video Artist Matt Byrne
With Ali Ammouchi, Alexis West and Aunty Lynette Crocker, Aviana Daveson, Uncle Lewis O’Brien.
5 Feb – 7 Mar 2027, Wharf 1 Theatre
“An extraordinary production… timely and essential” The Saturday Paper
One of the most warmly received new Australian plays of 2026, Logan St comes to Sydney Theatre Company direct from State Theatre Company South Australia, where it was praised as “a triumph of artistry, truth-telling and heartfelt humanity” (Stage Whispers).
Written and directed by Adelaide Festival sensation Jacob Boehme (Guuranda), a Narungga and Kaurna man, Logan St weaves elements of family history into a tapestry of touching human connection with unforgettable performances from Alexis West and Ali Ammouchi.
Goolie (Ammouchi), a 60-year-old Afghan cameleer, meets Dulcie (West), a young First Nations woman, after she helps herself to one of the pomegranates growing in his garden, in the backyard of an Adelaide mosque. It’s 1941 and a friendship blossoms that will endure for decades. They swap recipes and cook together, as delicious aromas waft through the theatre, while Goolie is appalled to learn that Dulcie must suppress her identity to live independently.
Adelaide’s Logan St was known as ‘Little Beirut’ in the 1940s, and Boehme’s stage play invites audiences into the neighbourhood’s kitchens – central spaces for culture, community and storytelling. Beautifully designed video elements take us even further back, to Kangaroo Island in 1836, where a Kaurna girl has been abducted by sealers.
As these tracks converge, the interplay between score, soundscape and even scent folds time together in a beautifully atmospheric production of a “profoundly moving work” (The Scoop).
BECKY SHAW
By Gina Gionfriddo Directed by Mitchell Butel
Designer Jeremy Allen Lighting Designer Damien Cooper Composer & Sound Designer David Bergman
With Tom Dawson, Andrea Demetriades, Lincoln Younes and more to be announced.
15 Feb – 25 Mar 2027, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
“Gina Gionfriddo’s tangled tale of love, sex and ethics… is as engrossing as it is ferociously funny, like a big box of fireworks fizzing and crackling across the stage from its first moments to its last” The New York Times
Directed by Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Mitchell Butel, Becky Shaw is a gloriously wicked comedy of contemporary manners by two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and screenwriter Gina Gionfriddo (House of Cards, Law and Order).
Loosely based on William Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair, Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw was revived on Broadway in 2026 in a Tony-winning production. In this brand-new Australian production, Andrea Demetriades (Home, I’m Darling, The River) steps into the deliciously complex role of Suzanna, a woman who learns never to play matchmaker.
Suzanna’s relationship with her acid-tongued foster brother Max is complicated. Max is cynical, damaged, and abrasive – but he is also loyal to Suzanna, and her dependence on him in the aftermath of her father’s death spills over into something… not exactly sibling-like. The charge is still there even after Suzanna marries nice guy Andrew. When they set Max up on a blind date with Andrew’s colleague Becky, what could go wrong?
“Gionfriddo is some kind of genius” (Variety), and Becky Shaw is her masterwork. Don’t miss this riotously funny portrait of romantic entanglement and the unspoken bounds of class.
THE PALACE LETTERS
By Melanie Tait Adapted from the book by Jenny Hocking Directed by Priscilla Jackman
6 Apr – 22 May 2027, Drama Theatre
Composer & Sound Designer James Peter Brown
With Jonathan Biggins, Georgie Parker and a cast of five.
Beloved stage and screen star Georgie Parker leads this riveting portrayal of historian Jenny Hocking’s fight to uncover the truth about Gough Whitlam’s dismissal, tracing a web of intrigue that leads all the way to Buckingham Palace.
In 1975, Australia faced its most serious constitutional crisis. In 2020 – thanks to Hocking – we finally gained access to long-suppressed correspondence from those turbulent days and weeks, revealing what was said in the corridors of power on two continents.
At the heart of Hocking’s landmark legal battle to have the papers released is the question of what the Queen knew of the Governor General’s intentions and when – and what it means for Australian independence.
Playwright Melanie Tait (The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race) has crafted a dynamite and witty political thriller that moves between past and present, capturing the events and febrile atmosphere of The Dismissal. Parker and a gifted ensemble – including Jonathan Biggins (The Gospel According to Paul) as Gough Whitlam – bring these turbulent events to vivid life.
The Sydney Opera House is the perfect venue for this pulse-pounding new work about an iconic event in Australia’s history, an original Sydney Theatre Company commission directed by Priscilla Jackman (RBG: Of Many, One).
AMAH AND NANNA
By Disapol Savetsila Directed by Darren Yap
Designer Nick Fry Lighting Designer Verity Hampson Composer & Sound Designer Max Lambert
With Madeleine Jones, Lynne McGranger, Annette Shun Wah and more to be announced.
10 Apr – 16 May 2027, Wharf 1 Theatre
The winner of the 2026 Patrick White Playwrights Award, Amah and Nanna sees Aussie entertainment grand dames Annette Shun Wah (Floating Life, Eat Carpet) and Gold Logie-winner Lynne McGranger (Home and Away) as two women from very different worlds who realise they have a lot in common.
When Nanna brings her infant grandson along to a political rally and the tyke is photographed in a Southern Cross baby sling, her daughter swiftly cuts off all contact. Nanna is devastated and angry, and the yapping dog owned by her next-door neighbour isn’t helping. While “seeing to” the mutt, she’s sprung by Amah (Shun Wah) – a Thai Chinese woman around the same age – who is dealing with her own family challenges.
Written by Disapol Savetsila – who was the youngest playwright ever programmed at Sydney Theatre Company with 2017’s Australian Graffiti – and directed by Darren Yap (Miracle City, Letters to Lindy), this urgently relevant and darkly comic thriller follows two vivacious seniors as they embark on a very unlikely friendship and a cross-country road trip toward self-discovery and the Red Centre.
Savetsila explores identity, tolerance, grievance politics and belonging in Australia, threaded through with his trademark heart and humour, and in gripping fashion. Like Thelma and Louise before them, Amah and Nanna light out for the great unknown while forces beyond their control swirl in the desert air, taking audiences on the ride of a lifetime.
MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES: DEATH BY DECKCHAIR
By Deb Cox Created by Fiona Eagger and Deb Cox Directed by Daniel Evans
Based on The Phryne Fisher series of books by Kerry Greenwood Developed with Elizabeth Coleman
With Aljin Abella, Blazey Best, Amber McMahon, Ryan Morgan and more to be announced.
8 May – 13 Jun 2027, Roslyn Packer Theatre
When murders pile up onboard a cruise ship, only one woman can find the culprit…
The iconic Miss Phryne Fisher shimmies onto the stage for the first time in this glittering world premiere production written by Deb Cox, co-creator of the original hit series with Fiona Eagger. Starring Amber McMahon (Accidental Death of an Anarchist), this is Miss Fisher quite literally as you have never seen her before.
It’s 1929, and Kerry Greenwood’s chic lady detective is sailing to the South Seas on a cruise when a murder, a jewel robbery and rumours of a mysterious curse throw the ship’s crew and passengers into a state of uproar. While Miss Fisher is more than happy to mix crime with cocktails and pleasure cruising, handsome Detective Inspector Jack Robinson finds himself drawn into the mystery – and way too much dancing – whether he likes it or not.
Dodging danger at every turn while running circles around her suspects, Miss Fisher meets a light-fingered academic, a honeymooning magician and the dissolute heir to a newspaper fortune. Think Knives Out, only with cloche hats and fox stoles.
McMahon brings glamour, cheek and a healthy dose of razor-sharp wit to a high-seas adventure that hurtles between the upper and lower decks. Is it possible the mystery is tied not only to class divisions, but to the Titanic itself?
Directed by Queensland Theatre Company Artistic Director Daniel Evans, and co-produced with Queensland Theatre Company and Jones Theatrical Group with Every Cloud Productions, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Death by Deckchair brings the jazz age to sumptuous theatrical life.
THE BOOK OF LIZ
By Amy Sedaris and David Sedaris Co-directed by Mitchell Butel and Tait de Lorenzo
With Celeste Barber and a cast of three.
29 May – 4 Jul 2027, Wharf 1 Theatre
A runaway from an Amish-like religious sect falls down the rabbit hole in this cult off-Broadway comedy from memoirist David Sedaris and his writer-actor sister Amy – a show that makes zealots of everyone who sees it.
Imagine Peter Weir’s Witness crossed with The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt by way of The Wizard of Oz and you’re getting warm, but nothing compares to the sheer wonder of The Book of Liz. In her Sydney Theatre Company debut, powerhouse comic sensation Celeste Barber stars in the Australian premiere production of this Sedaris marvel co-directed by Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Mitchell Butel and Tait de Lorenzo (Anna X).
Clueless about sex and the modern world but armed with a formidably sunny disposition, Sister Elizabeth Donderstock (Barber) runs away from her community after she’s forced to give up her recipe for cheese balls, the town’s chief export. On the road she encounters a series of eccentric characters, including a Ukrainian migrant who sounds like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins and wears a peanut costume to spruik the themed restaurant that Liz may soon be managing.
What follows is a gloriously silly picaresque about finding your place and your worth, “a delightfully off-key hymn to cliches we all live by, whether we know it or not” (The New York Times).
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
By Oscar Wilde Adapted and directed by Kip Williams
Designer Marg Horwell Lighting Designer Nick Schlieper Composer & Sound Designer Clemence Williams Video Designer David Bergman
With Nikki Shiels
30 Jun – 25 Jul 2027, Roslyn Packer Theatre
The Olivier and Tony Award-winning production makes a triumphant homecoming.
Kip Williams’ global smash hit cine-theatre adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s story returns to where it all began after becoming the hottest ticket in town during sold-out runs on the West End and Broadway, where it was hailed as “a triumph” (The New York Times) and “an exhilarating piece of storytelling” (The Hollywood Reporter).
Now Australian audiences have the chance to see this groundbreaking production (or see it again), with Nikki Shiels (Sunday) demonstrating why she’s one of Australia’s greatest actors as she is passed the baton from Eryn Jean Norvill and Sarah Snook.
Wilde’s classic story is reimagined with breathtaking theatrical imagination and big-screen bravado in a tour-de-force show that continues to surprise, finding new wrinkles in the tale of the wrinkle-free young aristocrat Dorian Gray.
Beautiful but impressionable, Dorian falls under the malign influence of Lord Henry Wotton and descends into a life of hedonism. The underbelly of Victorian London is ugly, even putrid, but Dorian remains outwardly unblemished, even as the years pass.
Shiels, who was the alternate performer during the 2022 Sydney and Melbourne seasons, plays 26 characters in a highwire feat of performance, stagecraft and technology. Don’t miss the thrill of watching a supreme talent walk the tightrope in “a dazzling, dangerous solo show” (★★★★★ The Guardian) and “a game-changing piece of theatre.” (★★★★★ The Telegraph).
THE FIFTH STEP
By David Ireland Directed by Kenneth Moraleda
Designer Hailley Hunt Lighting Designer BROCKMAN Composer & Sound Designer Sam Cheng
With Ashan Kumar and Erik Thomson.
31 Jul – 19 Sep 2027, Wharf 1 Theatre
“Bristling with playwright David Ireland’s signature style of knotty provocation and ribald comedy” The Guardian
This darkly hilarious two-hander about a young man and his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor stars Erik Thomson (Aftertaste, Packed to the Rafters) and Ashan Kumar (Amber, Daytime Deewane) in the Australian premiere production of the West End runaway success.
Director Kenneth Moraleda (4000 Miles) skilfully excavates the faultlines that appear after Luka (Kumar) asks the older James (Thomson) to sponsor him. James starts preparing Luka for the fifth step, the confessional stage in the AA program, but rigorous honesty is harder than it looks, and James has secrets of his own.
James counsels Luka against hanging out with his old friends, and the younger man begins smarting at the control James exerts over his life and relationships. For his part, James is surprised to discover that Luka has undergone a religious conversion and thinks he bumped into Jesus in the gym. Or was it Willem Dafoe? As trust falters and resentment mounts, the men inch ever closer to outright war.
As entertaining as it is acute about power and authority, The Fifth Step is “taut, funny and richly compassionate” (Financial Times).
JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN
By Kimberly Belflower Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks
With Masego Pitso and a cast of eight.
3 Sep – 16 Oct 2027, Drama Theatre
“A vital, hilarious, thrilling, urgently necessary new play” The New York Times
High school is a battleground in this funny and ferocious new Australian production of the Broadway and West End knockout John Proctor is the Villain, directed by Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director Anne-Louise Sarks (My Brilliant Career).
Masego Pitso (Picnic at Hanging Rock) stars in Kimberly Belflower’s powder keg play about a group of young people studying The Crucible while navigating sex, gossip and fractured friendships in a small American town. Arthur Miller’s classic takes on new resonance when shocking accusations are levelled in the classroom and the community takes sides, leaving the students to ponder the nature of power in art and in life.
Updating Miller’s portrait of mob hysteria for the social media age, Belflower gives us “the kind of heroes we actually need” (New York Magazine) – five teenagers just trying to work it out, hilarious and mad as hell. This is coming-of-age drama that isn’t afraid to be thorny and provocative and just as complex as adolescence itself.
Nominated for seven Tony Awards, John Proctor is the Villain arrives in Australia as one of the world’s most talked-about new plays and after a sold-out transfer to London’s Royal Court, where it was hailed as “joyous, blazingly intelligent” (Financial Times) and “thrilling to watch” (The New Statesman).
VANYA
By Simon Stephens Co-created by Simon Stephens, Andrew Scott and Sam Yates After Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya Co-directed by Marion Potts and Eryn Jean Norvill
With Eryn Jean Norvill.
16 Oct – 5 Dec 2027, Wharf 1 Theatre
“Funny, sexy and surprisingly emotional” The Independent
Eryn Jean Norvill (the originating star of The Picture of Dorian Gray) returns to Sydney Theatre Company in an Olivier Award-winning adaptation of Chekhov’s 1898 tragicomedy, written by Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) to be performed by a single actor.
Vanya manages the country estate of Alexander, an acclaimed film director with a beautiful younger wife, Helena. Alexander’s daughter Sonia holds a candle for local doctor Michael, but the good doctor loves Helena, and so does Vanya. What follows is the familiar story but with a modern twist – and a healthy sense of mischief amid the pathos.
Hailed as “one of the most gifted actors of her generation” (The Guardian), Norvill again displays all her virtuoso talent and versatility playing each member of this troubled household – characters whose inability to reach one another is made all the more potent by the actor’s aloneness.
Norvill is matched by one of Australia’s greatest stage directors, Marion Potts (Doubt: A Parable), who infuses this classic tale of love, loss and yearning with just the right mix of tragedy and comedy, finding “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty” (The New York Times).
THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO
Adapted by Verity Laughton from the novel by Pip Williams Directed by Shannon Rush
Costume Designer Ailsa Paterson Composer & Sound Designer Max Lyandvert
With Melissa Kahraman, Ksenja Logos, Billie-Rose Russell and more to be announced.
23 Oct – 11 Dec 2027, Drama Theatre
The team behind national theatrical phenomenon The Dictionary of Lost Words reunite to bring Pip Williams’ beloved companion novel The Bookbinder of Jericho to the stage in this hotly anticipated world premiere.
The Bookbinder of Jericho transports audiences to Oxford, where working-class twins Peggy and Maude live on a narrowboat at the advent of the First World War.
The sisters work at the university press binding books, but whip-smart Peggy hankers for more. Her boss is always catching her reading the books instead of binding them. Peggy gazes longingly across the street to Oxford’s Somerville College, where girls her own age are free to spend their days reading in the library.
Peggy begins to see the possibility of another life, one in which she can use her brains instead of her fingers. But will her love for a Belgian soldier be her salvation or her downfall?
Working on an epic canvas, playwright Verity Laughton and director Shannon Rush (Housework) and her team once again harness “soaring technical design” (Time Out) to bring a little-known slice of history alive in astonishing detail, shining a celebratory light on these women in their time and the words they live by.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
An Old Vic Production
A version by Jack Thorne Conceived and directed by Matthew Warchus
Set & Costume Designer Rob Howell Composer & Arranger Christopher Nightingale Lighting Designer Hugh Vanstone Sound Designer Simon Baker Movement Lizzi Gee
With Tim Minchin and a cast of 17.
11 Nov – 26 Dec 2027, Roslyn Packer Theatre
Tim Minchin returns to the Sydney Theatre Company stage in a magical five-time Tony Award-winning show for the whole family.
Written by superstar playwright and screenwriter Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Netflix’s Adolescence) and directed with an irrepressible sense of showmanship by Matilda The Musical mastermind Matthew Warchus, this stunningly immersive festive favourite is reason to rejoice.
As the gas lanterns are lit and the snow falls on a freezing Christmas night, Ebenezer Scrooge (Minchin) is called upon by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. They show him scenes from his life, and the miserly Scrooge is forced to reckon with regret and loss. But is it too late to thaw his cold heart?
Celebrated by audiences across the globe, this transporting adaptation from The Old Vic sparkles with gold tinsel, “fostering an infectious spirit of good cheer that reaches giddy heights” (The Hollywood Reporter).
Get ready to be swept into a world of Yuletide feasts as carols such as Joy to the World and Silent Night fill the Roslyn Packer Theatre. Ring the bells – a white Christmas is coming to Sydney!
Tickets for Sydney Theatre Company 2027 season are on sale for renewing subscribers from 15 September 2026 and new subscribers from 29 September at the website link below.
Website: https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/sydneytheatreco/
Hero image: Artistic Director Mitchell Butel, photo by Holly Ward. All other images supplied by Sydney Theatre Company.
Watch the 2027 Season trailer below:
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