Pick of the Plays 2025
In 2025 The Bard is back, along with some blockbuster Australian plays, world premieres, classics updated and Indigenous works. David Spicer picks some of the highlights.
All the world’s a stage for Shakespeare in Australia in the year ahead.
In Sydney, Sport for Jove Director Damien Ryan has gathered some of Australia’s most revered performers to tackle an edited mix of Shakespeare’s epic history dramas. Under the banner of The Player Kings : Shakespeare and Marlowe's History Cycle the cast, including John Gaden and Peter Carroll, will traverse the political chaos and medieval blood spilling of the Richards, the Henrys and the War of the Roses.
Across town Company B is staging The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters, described as an energised revival of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, starring Colin Friels (Nov).
Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre is re-imaging Macbeth. In their production (March) the Witches—whose cryptic prophecies drive Macbeth to murder, madness, and ruin—become the focus.
The Melbourne Theatre Company is staging Much Ado About Nothing (Nov), promising that the romantic comedy will be a theatrical feast.
Bell Shakespeare is touring its ‘intimate’ production of Romeo and Juliet to 26 venues across the country. Henry 5, one of The Bard’s most famous war plays, will premiere in a new production in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. (March to May). For the first time in nearly 30 years, the company will stage one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works, the political epic Coriolanus in Sydney and Melbourne (June to Aug). It tells the tale of war, power and politics that is both thrilling and disturbingly familiar.
The Dictionary of Lost Words
Adapted by Verity Laughton from the novel by Pip Williams, this hit play about the creation of the Oxford Dictionary will have a wide national audience with return seasons in capital cities and some regional dates.
“Multiple locations and character development are conveyed by some brilliant collaborations of set designer, costume designer and director,” wrote Stage Whispers’ reviewer Michael Brindley.’
“As a play, The Dictionary of Lost Words is a mix of touching scenes, of comedy as (the central character) Esme encounters the outside world, and wordy narration and at times rather preachy idealism.”
World Premieres
S. Shakthidharan, the writer of the international hit Counting and Cracking, has penned The Wrong Gods, a new work set in India that pits 50,000 years of tradition in a farming district against the desire of a daughter for education. MTC (June) and Belvoir (May).
The Ensemble Theatre is tapping nostalgia from the TV series A Country Practice with Melanie Tait’s How to Plot a Hit in Two Days. It centres around the writers creating the seminal episode when Molly died (Sept).
Queensland Theatre will stage two world premieres: Back to Bilo - based on the real-life battle of a regional town to allow Sri Lankan refugees to stay in their town (Sept), and Malacañan Made Us, Jordan Shea’s epic set in 1986 Philippines (Oct).
Never Have I Ever, a debut comedy from screenwriter and podcaster Deborah Frances-White, skewers the contradictions of contemporary society and the shifting sands of power and sexual politics. MTC (Feb) and Black Swan (June).
Classic Entertainment
In the 250th year after her birth, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice leaps to the stage in a vibrant retelling with a luminous local Queensland Theatre cast. (Feb). Image (right) by Sam Scoufos
From playwriting icon Joanna Murray-Smith comes this adaptation of the twentieth century’s most glamorous thriller, Talented Mr Ripley. Will McDonald (Heartbreak High) plays Tom Ripley, an orphan and a striver, barely scraping by in 1950s New York. Sydney Theatre Company (Aug).
Daphne du Maurier’s classic 1938 novel Rebecca, where love and doubt cloak the corridors of Manderley, updated by Anne-Louise Sarks, will star Pamela Rabe, Nikki Shiels, and Bert LaBonté. MTC (Oct).
And Then There Were None
From the producers of The Mousetrap comes a brand-new production of Agatha Christie’s best-selling crime novel of all time, And Then There Were None, opening at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre in February, then Sydney’s Theatre Royal from May.
Ten people are lured to a solitary mansion on an island off the English coast, when a storm cuts them off from the mainland. The true reason for their presence on the island soon becomes horribly clear.
Indigenous Theatre
A love story unfolds when two teenage boys meet under a lemon tree, in the light of a full moon in Whitefella Yella Tree. Also available as new release on Australian Theatre Live, the stage production can be seen at the STC (Sept) and La Boite (Oct).
Dear Son: Letters and Reflections From First Nations Fathers is based on the book by Thomas Mayo, adapted by Isaac Drandic, featuring letters from 12 Indigenous leaders to their sons in a co-production between Queensland Theatre and State Theatre SA (July).
From Andrea James, the writer of Sunshine Super Girl comes The Black Woman of Gippsland, “a thrilling modern mystery’’ in which a woman is tossed ashore from the sea, bedraggled and lost 150 years ago. MTC (May).
Black Swan presents Blue, a tender monologue written by Heartbreak High star Thomas Weatherall. (May).
Malthouse presents A Nightime Travesty, complete with explosions, zany costumes, gruesome decapitations, existential horror, Blak humour, romance, genocide and a live band (Feb).
David Williamson Plays
Australia’s towering playwright (literally and figuratively) is back in favour across the country. Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre is staging a new work of his Aria (Jan) and a revival of Emerald City (July). His seminal work The Removalists, set in violent inner-city Melbourne, is being revived by the MTC (March), and Queensland Theatre is introducing Brisbane audiences to his take on the world of country music in Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica (June).
Click here to read more about 2025 seasons all around Australia.
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