fortyfivedownstairs has announced the January – June 2025 theatre program featuring nine seasons presented by an outstanding line-up of theatre-makers and musicians.
“There’s no theatre experience in Melbourne quite like the fortyfivedownstairs experience,” said Cameron Lukey, Artistic Director (theatre). “Audiences descend to the surprisingly malleable basement of a nineteenth-century building, with giant arched windows, four iron pillars in the centre, and a pressed metal ceiling, to discover whatever reinvention awaits.
“It’s a space that has challenged and inspired numerous theatre-makers, and in thinking about how to launch our January-June 2025 program, I wanted to celebrate its character and the adventure artists and audiences share when heading down the rabbit hole.”
“I really hope there will be something in the program that intrigues you and I look forward to an exciting 2025!” said Lukey.
Thirty-Six
21 January – 2 February 2025
So there’s this party she’s having. It might be a funerary rite or a birthday celebration, depending on your perspective. Performed by Bayley Turner (Thrive: Queer Work Out Loud), directed by Kitan Petkovski (The Inheritance), and co-written by Turner and legendary UK playwright Jo Clifford (The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven), Thirty-Six is an empowering and cathartic new work that explores the complex relationship gender diverse people have with ageing, mortality, grief, and growth. Presented by fortyfivedownstairs in association with Bullet Heart Club and Midsumma Festival 2025.
Compose Queer x Queerstories
6 – 9 February 2025
Featuring thirteen world-premiere commissions from thirteen composers, this boldly ambitious initiative sees the Divisi Chamber Singers, one of Australia’s most exciting vocal ensembles, partner with Maeve Marsden, curator of the beloved Queerstories project. Divisi, accompanied by pianist Coady Green, will take audiences on a journey through stories of love, pain, joy, and friendship in this unprecedented celebration of queer artistry and experience, presented as part of Midsumma Festival 2025.
POTUS, Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive
13 February – 2 March 2025
When a White House PR nightmare spins into a full-blown shit show, seven brilliant and beleaguered women must risk life and liberty to keep the commander-in-chief out of trouble. Lightning Jar Theatre returns to fortyfivedownstairs following their enormously successful production of Mr Burns: a post electric play in 2019, teaming with Trophy Boys director Marni Mount to present the Australian premiere of Selina Fillinger’s whip smart, all female farce, featuring Lucy Ansell, Carolyn Bock, Candy Bowers, Jen Bush, Liliana Dalton, Hannah Greenwood, Tilly Legge, and AYA Taur.
Boys on the Verge of Tears
13 – 30 March 2025
Set entirely in a men’s public bathroom, Sam Grabiner’s award-winning play captures the raw, unfiltered lives of boys and men grappling with the complexities of masculinity. In this Australian premiere, presented by The Maybe Pile (Trophy Boys) and directed by Keegan Bragg (MinterEllison Future Director 2023), five of Melbourne’s premiere actors – including Karl Richmond (The Inheritance) and Ben Walter (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) – bring to life a boggling array of characters caught in moments of chaos, bravado, and surprising tenderness.
De Profundis
30 April – 4 May 2025
In 1897, from the solitude of his prison cell, Oscar Wilde poured his heart into a searing 50,000-word letter to his estranged lover Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas. Blistering with anguish and fury, De Profundis is Wilde’s unfiltered outpouring of pain, betrayal, and self-revelation – a plea for truth, a meditation on art, and a journey toward forgiveness. This powerful letter has echoed through time, and now, in an intimate special event crafted with director Dino Dimitriadis (Overflow, Arts Centre Melbourne) and featuring a live cello accompaniment by Conrad Hamill, the iconic Paul Capsis reads Wilde’s anthem for the right to love and live authentically, no matter the cost.
fortyfivedownstairs Chamber Music Festival
6 – 18 May 2025
Curated by pianist Coady Green, the presence of Beethoven looms large throughout the festival, with five of his symphonies and his original Egmont music with narration by Paul English featured, as well as Liszt’s monumental arrangement of the Ninth Symphony for two pianos. Masterpieces by Holst, Scriabin, Britten, and Mozart are also on offer, including Holst’s original two-piano version of The Planets with large percussion ensemble. And from a spotlight on Australian composers Meta Cohen, Stuart Greenbaum, Calvin Bowman and Linda Kouvaras (including a powerful new work set to Gwen Harwood’s poetry performed by Helen Morse), to Elvis Costello’s Juliet Letters and the music of iconic Chilean artist Violeta Parra, the contemporary offerings are just as enticing.
ENDGAMES: Three short works by Hibberd, Beckett and Chekhov
22 May – 1 June 2025
Following the acclaimed and twice sold-out Krapp’s Last Tape, legendary performer Max Gillies will again collaborate with director Laurence Strangio (L’amante anglaise) on another foray into “wistfulness, embarrassment, desire and regret” (The Age, 2018). Bringing together monologues by three inimitable playwrights, ENDGAMES is a bittersweet elegy to posterity and obsession. A resolute recluse declares his bequest, a shabby paramour is haunted by his past, and a beleaguered husband attempts a public lecture. Ranging from farce to melancholy, Gillies brings his particular tragicomic affinity to these desperate existential vignettes.
Fat Pig: The Opera
5 – 8 June 2025
BK Opera and Forest Collective present this Australian premiere of American composer Matt Boehler and Australian librettist Miriam Gordon-Stewart’s adaptation of Neil LaBute’s award-winning play. Directed by Kate Millet, conducted by Evan Lawson, and featuring sopranos Amanda Windred and Belinda Dalton, baritone Kiran Rajasingam, and tenor Daniel Szesiong Todd, this black comedy examines the nature of beauty and attraction, revealing the operatic reserves of human truth that lie beneath the surface of a workplace rom-com.
Happy-Go-Wrong
25 – 29 June 2025
Powerhouse performer Andi Snelling is in the fight of her life, stuck behind “the fourth wall”. Little does she know, she is about to orchestrate her own rescue and return to the stage with a second chance at life. Based on the true story of a life-changing tick bite, Happy-Go-Wrong is a visceral physical theatre odyssey that celebrates the preciousness of life. Having received numerous awards and five star reviews, this “highlight of the year” (The Age) returns to Melbourne for a very special homecoming.
For more information about fortyfivedownstairs’ January – June 2025 theatre program, visit: www.fortyfivedownstairs.com for details.
Image: Paul Capsis to star in De Profundis – photo by Cameron Grant @parenthesy