Sister Act to Streetcar: Your mid-year guide to Melbourne stage shows

As most Melbourne theatregoers would be aware, we’re in an awkward transition period this year. There is, as always, plenty to see, but you may not find it in the usual location. The Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation is in full swing, and we’ll be navigating significant disruptions for some time yet. That project should be worth the wait – it promises to reshape and connect a district of performance venues, galleries, and other major arts institutions on the south bank of the Yarra, stretching from Hamer Hall to the Malthouse.

Short-term pain was inevitable, though, and with the State Theatre, the largest at Arts Centre Melbourne, now closed until 2027 for renovations, Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet have been forced to relocate. Our city has its famed “East End” theatre district to pick up the slack, but that has flow-on effects for commercial musical theatre. Here’s a Melbourne stage guide to keep you in the loop through an unusual year.

OPERA

Opera lovers have borne the brunt of renovation frustration, but if you’re looking to commemorate the centenary of Puccini’s death, you won’t go wanting. Victorian Opera is staging La Rondine at the Palais Theatre (August 8-10) and Melbourne Opera a yet-to-be-announced Puccini festival in September. For Opera Australia’s national tour of La Bohème, you’ll have to wander to regional Victoria or outer metropolitan Melbourne: Dean Bryant’s production seems to be headed everywhere except Melbourne (July 12 to August 3).

For those seeking more contemporary fare, Jonathan Mills’ opera Eucalyptus, adapted from Murray Bail’s award-winning novel, plays at the Palais (October 16-19), while in a curious coincidence, Bail’s former spouse Helen Garner has also inspired an opera, based on her novella The Children’s Bach, to be staged by Lyric Opera at Theatre Works (August 30 to September 7).

BALLET

All eyes in the ballet world will be on the global premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s Oscar. I’m desperately intrigued to see how the spirit of Oscar Wilde – a queer saint and the most verbally gifted of figures – will be resurrected through a pre-linguistic medium like dance, and it’s bound to be a highlight of the Australian Ballet’s program from their new temporary home at the Regent Theatre (September 13-24).

MUSICAL THEATRE

It does mean losing one big commercial musical in 2024, though it’s hard to see a glass half empty with big-budget crowd-pleasers such as Wicked and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast now showing. Six – the musical that cheekily reimagines the wives of Henry VIII as pop stars – returns (August 2 to October 20), and will precede Tina (from September 21), the jukebox biography of rock legend Tina Turner, with Sister Act to follow (from November 3).

If that seems a little thin, there’s a new Australian musical based on Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career at the MTC (November 7 to December 18), and musical theatre mavens can seek solace in Melbourne’s thriving independent scene. Venues such as the Butterfly Club in the CBD, or Chapel Off Chapel in Prahran, regularly program indie musicals and cabaret, and there are gems to be found. You can see Nadine Garner starring in Broadway composer William Finn’s song cycle Elegies at fortyfivedownstairs (July 10-21), or catch a Victorian Opera production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street A Musical Thriller at the Arts Centre Melbourne Playhouse (September 14-21). Adventurers and masochists might even brave the upcoming musical parody of Fifty Shades of Grey at St Kilda’s Alex Theatre (July 19-28). A classic reimagined, no doubt!

MAIN STAGE THEATRE

Fear not if you’re a theatre traditionalist – there are more than enough genuine classics being reimagined at the Melbourne Theatre Company and the Malthouse, not to mention our commercial stages, to keep you satisfied. Anyone who witnessed Nikki Shiels’ star turn as Nora Helmer in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House many years ago will be itching to see her as Blanche Dubois in the MTC’s upcoming production of A Streetcar Named Desire (July 9 to August 17). Theatre’s most notorious faded southern belle is a role that attracts the finest actresses in the world – I’ve seen Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert and Sigrid Thornton playing Blanche in my time – and Shiels certainly has the talent for a once-in-a-generation performance.

Over at the Malthouse, Bojana Novakovic returns to the stage after a decade away to bring fiery presence to another legendary role – Lady Macbeth. Macbeth (An Undoing) reinvents Shakespeare’s play to re-centre the “fiend-like queen” and trace a plausible arc for her unexplained and unshown descent into madness (July 5-28). And Red Stitch’s acclaimed production of Edward Albee’s marital slugfest Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is being revived at the Comedy Theatre (from June 29), starring Kat Stewart (Underbelly, Offspring) and David Whiteley. The first run sold out in hours, and rightly so. Like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton before them, Stewart and Whiteley are husband and wife in real life, and under Sarah Goodes’ direction their savage and cynical power games dominate the stage.

Bored by the canon? No worries. There’s a cornucopia of new work to be sampled. Among the brightest lights are Emmanuelle Mattana’s Trophy Boys at Arts Centre Melbourne (July 16-21) – a smart, timely and darkly hilarious satire that has an all-female and nonbinary cast in full drag, playing a debating team at an elite all-boys private school. Anyone who suffered a private school education will love (and feel avenged by) this show.

It’s great to see performance artist Nicola Gunn returning to Australian shores, too. Apologia at the Malthouse (August 6-18) will explore the problem of translation through the performer’s fantasy of being a French actress. If it’s anything like Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster (2015), expect unorthodox brilliance, an intricate juxtaposition of stylised physical theatre and Gunn saying aloud, with whimsical directness, what others only dare think.

Main stage highlights are too numerous to list, but include Suzan-Lori Parks’ tragicomic two-hander about brothers with a secret history, Topdog/Underdog (August 23 to September 21) and Martyna Majok’s sharp and big-hearted play Cost of Living (September 14 to October 19), which explores caregiving, disability and role reversal in intimate relationships, both at the MTC.

INDIE THEATRE

Melbourne’s independent scene offers some of the most original and daring theatrical experiences. It also offers its share of total excruciation, of course, making it chancier for newcomers to navigate. As a veteran poison-taster, I can recommend a couple of shows to watch out for. At fortyfivedownstairs, the mavericks from Bloomshed will upend The Importance of Being Earnest (August 1-11). Their lively and inventive take on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and their bizarre fusion of sport and art, A Dodgeball Named Desire, make this show a serious temptation (and we know what Oscar Wilde thought about those).

Also at fortyfivedownstairs is Bad Boy, a solo work from a theatrical dream team – playwright Patricia Cornelius, director Susie Dee and performer Nicci Wilks – promising a powerful deep-dive into toxic masculinity and domestic violence (September 26 to October 6). You can also encounter a wealth of niche, hybrid, immersive and experimental performance at places such as Arts House in North Melbourne or the Substation in Newport, before the Melbourne Fringe Festival takes over the city in October.

AND ANOTHER THING …

Finally, there’s a new venue theatregoers should embrace. The Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne has been relocated and transformed. No longer a ratty corner of the student union building, it’s now a state-of-the-art theatre complex programming work for the public. It recently teamed up with the Rising festival for a sublimely staged production of the Sri Lankan-Australian epic Counting and Cracking, and although it will be quiet for a while, keep your eyes peeled for a strong season of contemporary dance from November.

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