Australia on stage: the best theatre, musicals, dance and opera of 2024
Big Name, No Blankets
Ilbijerri Theatre Company
Sydney; Melbourne; Brisbane; Darwin; heading to Perth festival, 27 February – 1 March and Adelaide Festival, 14-16 March.
It’s not often that a jukebox musical would make an end-of-year best theatre list, but Big Name, No Blankets – which tells the story of the iconic Warumpi Band – is no ordinary jukebox musical. Part traditional musical, part rock gig, and all-electrifying, it’s powered by hits like Blackfella/Whitefella and guides us through the music that broke records, blazed trails and lifted hearts.
The production, directed by Rachael Maza and Anyupa Butcher, has a rollicking heartbeat that invites you to respond. Its Sydney festival season in January featured a staggering, star-making turn for Googoorewon Knox (now playing George Washington in the Australian production of Hamilton) as George Burarrwanga, one of Australia’s greatest frontmen. When Knox finally sings My Island Home, perhaps now the band’s best-known song, he does it in language, like Burarrwanga often did in later years. It’s a moment of deep custodianship and care for Country. It makes you feel. – Cassie Tongue
Read more: Big Name No Blankets review – Warumpi Band musical is a joyous, rollicking tribute
A Streetcar Named Desire
Melbourne Theatre Company
Melbourne
Tennessee Williams was the great lyricist of women’s suffering under patriarchy. His memorable protagonists – most famously, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire – are given us in all their vulnerability, pain and powerlessness. As the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin said, he showed how women’s lives are “unbearable”.
Anne-Louise Sarks’ production of A Streetcar Named Desire for Melbourne Theatre Company stripped back the play to reveal its pain and violence. This production refused any softening romanticism. The result was astonishing: a play that’s often seen through a mist of nostalgia was staged in a new, contemporary light. It revealed the sinews of Williams’ peerless dramaturgy, and showed how relevant it remains in a world where family violence kills women every day. – Alison Croggon
Read more: A Streetcar Named Desire review – Nikki Shiels is majestic but she’s no Blanche
Counting and Cracking
Belvoir St Theatre and Kurinji co-production
Melbourne; Sydney
S Shakthidharan’s multigenerational Sri Lankan-Australian saga, which premiered in Sydney in 2019 to acclaim and awards, is one of the most ambitious, absorbing and transportive pieces of Australian theatre in recent years.
Remounted at Carriageworks (ahead of seasons in Melbourne and New York), the show benefited from its original design: a horseshoe of wooden seating banks around a runway stage, which felt powerfully communal, informal and intimate. A knockout cast of 16 performers, speaking Tamil, Sinhala and English, interwove the stories of a young student and his migrant mum in mid-aughts Sydney, and a traumatic past in 1950s Colombo as it tipped into civil war – with live music, and a sprinkle of Belvoir’s DIY theatre magic. This is theatre at its best. – Dee Jefferson
Gaslight
Queensland Theatre
Brisbane; Melbourne; Canberra; Perth; Newcastle; Parramatta; Sydney
Adapted by Canadians Patty Jamieson and Johnna Wright (the play briefly lapsed out of copyright, so they cut the police inspector and rejigged the ending), Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 potboiler came alive in this handsome, old-school staging directed by Lee Lewis.
Even refreshed, the plot is a wheezy one: newlywed Bella hears strange noises and frequently misplaces things, while hubby Jack seems jolly keen to convince her she’s losing her mind. But terrific performances, suspenseful moments and surprises (including a great “ah-ha!” moment when the audience realised as one where the family jewels were hidden) made for a transporting night. Geraldine Hakewill was electrifying as the fragile Bella, Toby Schmitz a delightful cad as Jack. Courtney Cavallaro chipped in nicely as the uppity maid, and Kate Fitzpatrick frequently stole the show as the stony-faced housekeeper. – Jason Blake
Read more: Gaslight review – Toby Schmitz and Geraldine Hakewill star in cinematic story of abuse
My Brilliant Career
Melbourne Theatre Company
Melbourne
It’s difficult to imagine a better musical adaptation of Stella “Miles” Franklin’s semi-autobiographical novel than this one, which transposes protagonist Sybylla Melvyn’s crackling energy and bolshie voice into a relatable contemporary figure. The potential in musical theatre duo Matthew Frank (music) and Dean Bryant (book and lyrics) finally comes to fruition, aided enormously by co-writer Sheridan Harbridge, who brings much of the spunk and off-kilter humour.
Kala Gare electrifies the stage, and director Anne-Louise Sarks orchestrates the mood and texture with remarkable conviction. Stage design, wit and candour combine to produce an utterly winning and emotional spectacle. It was fully resourced and meticulously developed, if you’re wondering why we don’t see work of this quality more often. – Tim Byrne
Read more: My Brilliant Career review – this Miles Franklin musical is a funny, feminist triumph
Oscar
Australian Ballet
Melbourne; Sydney
Contemporary ballet can feel welded to the idea that a pas de deux should take place between a man and a woman. What a privilege to see what can happen when that idea is done away with.
Oscar is the first commissioned full-length work from the Australian Ballet company in 20 years. British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon blends Oscar Wilde’s biography with his stories The Nightingale and the Rose and The Picture of Dorian Gray. At the heart of the ballet is the relationship between Oscar and his illicit lover, Bosie. Danced by Callum Linnane and Benjamin Garrett, respectively, at the performance I attended, their relationship was filled with passion and warmth, and then rage and collapse. Wheeldon’s ballet is utterly contemporary, but fits perfectly into the tradition of story ballets. – Jane Howard
Read more: Oscar review – much to love in this blend of classical and contemporary dance
August: Osage County
Belvoir St Theatre
Sydney; then heading to Perth festival
Chicago’s Steppenwolf brought its original production of August: Osage County to Sydney in 2010 and wowed us with a massive set and stellar performances from Broadway stars Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton. Belvoir’s version couldn’t compete set-wise, of course, but the acting was no less remarkable in a roiling three and a half hours of family drama that made Tracy Letts’ tragicomic portrait of a disintegrating family feel more current, like a microcosm of today’s irreconcilably polarised America.
Directed by Eamon Flack, Pamela Rabe flared brilliantly as the play’s poisonous matriarch, Violet. Tamsin Carroll, Anna Samson and Amy Mathews were marvellous as her daughters. Helen Thomson shone as Violet’s sister, and according to everyone I’ve asked, Greg Stone got a round of delighted applause every night for his character’s attempt to freestyle a pre-dinner prayer. A partially recast version of the show is opening at the Perth festival in February. If you can get to it, don’t miss it. – JB
Read more: August: Osage County review – Pamela Rabe leads stellar cast in an American tragicomedy
Guuranda
Adelaide festival
Kaurna and Narungga director Jacob Boehme helmed this collaborative, intergenerational epic that brought the creation stories and songlines of South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula – the coastal homeland of the Narungga nation – to the stage.
With an episodic structure that leapfrogged from mesmerising contemporary dance to playful puppeteering, Guuranda was anchored by a belting duet between Narungga song woman Sonya Rankine and songman Warren Milera, whose voices and images were filmed and projected on to towering screens on either side of the stage, as they sang live and in language somewhere behind it. It was a fittingly larger-than-life moment for traditions grounded in intimacy, family and community, but nevertheless cosmic in scale. – Walter Marsh
Cost of Living
Sydney Theatre Company/Queensland Theatre
Sydney; Brisbane
The four deft, witty performances in Cost of Living provided universally relatable experiences of human vulnerability, beyond the play’s obvious concerns with the access needs of people with disabilities. US playwright Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer-winning work (also staged in a separate production by Melbourne Theatre Company this year) is about the imperfections and push-and-pull in relationships, making the case that preconceived attitudes block us from connection.
Kate Hood was delightfully spiky as Ani, left quadriplegic by an accident and negotiating a future with flawed erstwhile partner Eddie (Philip Quast), while Dan Daw was charismatic as wealthy PhD student John, negotiating terms with cash-strapped Jess (Zoe de Plevitz) to become his personal care assistant. More such authentic casting and diversity, please, theatre programmers! – Steve Dow
Prima Facie
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Perth
It is no mean feat restaging an Olivier award-winning play, not least one that has just finished acclaimed seasons on the West End and Broadway with the brilliant Jodie Comer. But Black Swan State Theatre Company rose to the challenge, presenting an incisive retelling of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play, which explores the treatment of sexual assault victims in the legal system through the eyes of defence barrister Tessa Ensler.
Played with striking depth and intensity by Perth-raised Sophia Forrest, Tessa’s transformation from lawyer to victim is both heart-wrenching and illuminating. While the set is minimal compared to international stagings, its clever lighting and sound design – from pulsing heartbeats to soaring string melodies – elevates the tension in this emotionally charged production. – Rosamund Brennan
Read more: Prima Facie review – Suzie Miller’s runaway success is tense and timely in new version
Death of a Salesman
GWB Entertainment and Andrew Henry Presents
Perth
While a casino may be an ironic venue to stage a play which critiques capitalism, it did nothing to diminish the effect of Arthur Miller’s 1949 classic. As I glanced around the Crown Theatre, the profundity of its message was written all over the audience’s faces: anguish, tears and an intense, absorbed focus.
Seventy-five years after its debut, Miller’s tragic study of a retrenched travelling salesman still resonates, and this superbly cast staging cuts deeply into the nuanced traumas of its characters. Anthony LaPaglia was devastating as a downtrodden Willy Loman, while Alison Whyte was equal parts fragile and resolute as his loyal wife Linda. Equally impressive was the staging, which took its cues from Miller’s original minimalist designand notion that the play unfolded inside Willy’s head. – RB
Read more: Death of a Salesman review – Anthony LaPaglia leads an electric, devastating tragedy
The Hate Race
Malthouse Theatre
Melbourne
Maxine Beneba Clarke’s 2016 memoir got the stage treatment this year, with her memories of growing up Black in the conservative suburbs of Sydney coming to life in a one-woman show, starring the formidable Zahra Newman and also written by Clarke. The author’s poetic cadence translates well for theatre, with a splash of music helping things along.
Newman’s masterful performance saw her embody the young Clarke, as well as teachers, family and terrifying schoolyard bullies, all with equal ease. For a show with harrowing content, it’s also fresh and funny, with many laugh-out-loud moments. The Hate Race is an important and perennially relevant story, and this faithful and fiery adaptation reveals new layers. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
Read more: The Hate Race review – Zahra Newman is brilliant in Maxine Beneba Clarke’s one-woman show
The Lewis Trilogy
Griffin Theatre Company
Sydney
Griffin farewelled its soon-to-be-renovated SBW Stables Theatre with one of the most ambitious projects the company has attempted – a triple-bill of Louis Nowra’s semi-autobiographical plays Summer of the Aliens, Cosi and This Much Is True, with each play cut to about 90 minutes.
With the same company spread across the trilogy the acting was never less than lively and everyone had time to shine: Thomas Campbell as the feckless Eric in Aliens; Phillip Lynch as Lewis and Paul Capsis as Roy in Cosi (the standout of the three shows) and William Zappa as Lewis/Louis in the ruefully funny This Much is True. Taken in one day, the Lewis Trilogy felt like you were watching Australia’s evolution on fast-forward. – JB
Orpheus & Eurydice
Opera Queensland, Circa and West Australian Opera
Sydney; Perth; Brisbane; heading to Melbourne, 2-5 December 2025
Fiery, intense and captivating are a few of the words I would use to describe this genre-bending production, combining opera and acrobatics to thrilling effect. Unsurprising, perhaps, given its source: a Greek tragedy that oscillates from passionate romance to a lethal snake bite, a descent to the underworld, and a lover’s ultimate sacrifice.
While opera purists may rue this contemporary mashup, there’s no denying its entertainment value. Acrobats catapult across the stage, and each other – at times piled three or four high – as if in competition with the piercing soprano of the divine Prudence Sanders (Eurydice). Beautifully soundtracked by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (playing Gluck’s original score), Orpheus & Eurydice is an adrenaline-pumping trip to hell and back, one that I’d willingly take many times over. – RB
Multiple Bad Things
Back to Back Theatre
Geelong/Melbourne; heading to Sydney 8-12 January
Returning to their base in Geelong after awards triumph overseas, Back to Back Theatre produced one their darkest and most penetrating works to date with Multiple Bad Things. In a surreal but achingly familiar workplace – tedium and banality papering over an atmosphere of quiet existential dread – three colleagues navigate issues of power, gender and corruption with a kind of swirling morbidity.
As always with this extraordinary company of disabled and neurodivergent actors, questions of agency and coercion mix with moments of joy and wit, their deeply humanist perspective never stooping to sentimentality or reassurance. Most provocative from this company of provocateurs is the commentary on the language of disability, and how its mainstream use ironically further marginalises the already marginalised. – TB
Read more: Multiple Bad Things review – this provocative Australian ensemble is better than ever
The Inheritance
Seymour Centre
Sydney
Matthew López’s Pulitzer-winning epic (seven and a half hours) got two productions this year, one in Melbourne (which I didn’t see), and this one in the Seymour Centre’s 120-seat Reginald Theatre, which I’m very glad I did. Hands down, it was the most powerful indie theatre experience of the year.
The Inheritance comes in two big parts. The first introduces us to the main characters, including mild-mannered Eric (Teale Howie), his playwright lover Toby (Ryan Panizza) and new-boy-in-town Adam (Tom Rodgers). We also meet the anachronistic figure of Edwardian English novelist EM Forster (Simon Burke), whose Howards End is the play’s template and roadmap – one that leads the characters to an upstate New York farmhouse that served as a refuge for dying men during the Aids crisis.
A symphony of big ideas, didactic rants, salty humour, explicit dialogue, queer politics and grief for a generation lost. Excellent performances made this a real rollercoaster ride. – JB
Yentl
Kadimah Yiddish Theatre
Melbourne
While slightly less dazzling than its initial run in 2022, which cast the astonishing Jana Zvedeniuk in the eponymous role, this remount of Kadimah Yiddish Theatre’s adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story still managed to move the needle on ritualism and doctrinal interrogation in this country. Deeply respectful of the source material, writers Elise Esther Hearst, Galit Klas and Gary Abrahams (who also directs) massage Singer’s parabolic story into a deeply moving and urgent plea for the validity of trans identity. Amy Hack brings dignity and pathos to the role of a girl who wants to be a boy, and Evelyn Krape proves her worth as an agent of chaos and transformation. – TB
Read more: Yentl review – Australian theatre is so rarely this complex, or this moving
Never Closer
Belvoir St Theatre
Sydney
Never Closer began life as a bona fide word-of-mouth hit in Belvoir’s downstairs theatre – a testing ground for independent productions – before making the jump upstairs to its main stage. It’s a yuletide play set mostly over one Christmas Eve during The Troubles; a group of high school friends reunite in Northern Ireland to excavate old feuds and present anxieties. With its boiler-room tensions and worn-in characters who trade insults and injuries, apologies and confessions, Never Closer feels like that rarest of things for a new Australian play: an instant classic. – Michael Sun
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
Melbourne; heading to Sydney 7 Nov-14 Dec 2025
It was very good in its original home at Red Stitch, but something spellbinding happened when this revival of Edward Albee’s caustic masterpiece transferred to Melbourne’s larger Comedy Theatre earlier in the year (and should bode well for its Sydney Theatre Company season next year).
Directed with supreme confidence and attention to detail by Sarah Goodes, the superb cast of four – led by real-life couple Kat Stewart and Dave Whitely – bring enormous pathos and humanity to the ostensible gargoyles of Albee’s warped imagination. Every chomped ice cube, every withering barb, lands like a slap but Goodes knows when to turn the temperature down too. It’s an epic, exhausting theatrical ride. Freshen your drink; it’s going to be a thrilling, if bumpy, night. – TB
Read more: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? review – sparks fly in this thrilling new production
Invisible Opera
Perth festival
At a festival that revelled in immersive productions, Invisible Opera – created by Sophia Brous with Lara Thoms, Samara Hersch and Faye Driscoll – was the one that I couldn’t stop thinking about: 200 of us packed into a grandstand on Scarborough beach to watch sunset close a glorious day across the promenade. Through headphones, a voice gently described the idyllic scene: “a clear sky. A distant plane … the flare of a late afternoon sun creating dancing dots, oracular squiggles across your eyes.” So far so good – until it started describing the people walking past us too: “a young couple, maybe a Tinder date”; a man whose “bare chest is showing just the rosiest tint of sunburn”. The narration, we realised, was happening in real-time – and it was unclear whether the people we were watching knew they were part of the show.
It was unsettling and quickly became sinister when our headphones tuned out of the sweet narration, and into what seemed to be a police frequency; it was a cop now surveilling the public, reporting “antisocial behaviour” and pointing out the undesirables who needed to be removed. What had started as a work about a perfect day at the beach ended up showing us the social cost of so-called perfection – and underlining our own complicity in that. – Steph Harmon
