Malthouse Theatre has launched its 2027 season, the first full program from Artistic Director and Co-CEO Dean Bryant – featuring eight electric productions, all new Australian works and seven of them world premieres spanning outrageous comedy, moving drama, chilling horror, fierce cabaret and an irreverent shakeup of the classics.
Bryant’s inaugural season tackles some of the biggest questions of our times. What are the consequences of letting AI control our lives? What do we owe the people who raised us? Can pop music be a political force? Can a religious life help an atheist find meaning? And how well do you ever know someone, even the love of your life?
“Theatre gives us permission to turn off our phones, take a seat and become an audience together, and that’s what this season is built around,” says Bryant. “It’s the first season I’ve put together from start to finish, and I wanted it to be unmistakably ours: every work by Australian creators, nearly all of them world premieres, from artists taking on big questions with humour and nerve.”
“Theatre that electrifies and sends audiences out fully charged is what we’re aspiring to. Come in, sit down, lock in…and let go,” adds Bryant.
MALTHOUSE THEATRE 2027 SEASON:
Opening the season from Friday 19 February is the world premiere of The Tartuffe™, written by and starring Eddie Perfect (The Beast, Beetlejuice) after Molière and directed by Dean Bryant. Orgon is having an existential crisis, so in comes The Tartuffe, an AI-powered hairdressing robot who listens, cares and wants to know what’s on for the weekend. Then the family gives it access to, well, everything.
Perfect will be joined on stage by Karis Oka (Beetlejuice), rising comedy star Noah Szto (Melbourne International Comedy Festival Best Newcomer 2024 and Director’s Choice 2025) and a team of clowns, in a dystopian laugh-fest from the team behind Victorian Opera’s Green Room Award-winning Candide that will make audiences regret everything they’ve ever told ChatGPT.
Landing at Malthouse for its Victorian premiere from Wednesday 12 May, swim is Mununjali poet Ellen van Neerven’s (Throat, Heat and Light) debut work for the stage. On a sizzling summer’s day at the public pool, genderfluid protagonist E negotiates the space between the change rooms, until the words of their Aunty come to them on the diving blocks and the crystalline blue tiles give way to much deeper water.
First staged at Griffin Theatre Company, this magical realist play is brought to the Kulin Nations by ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, YIRRAMBOI and Malthouse, directed by ILBIJERRI Artistic Director Andrea James, and starring Cynda Jace Beare (Poems of a Transsexual Nature) and Tahlee Fereday (Black Light, Because the Night).
From Friday 4 June, the Merlyn transforms into a liminal world of immersive sound and luminous imagery in the world premiere of Stone Yard Devotional, blurring the line between theatre and art installation. Charlotte Wood’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel is adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Sarah Goodes, reuniting them after Julia, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Switzerland, from an original concept by Justine Clarke and Sarah Goodes.
Legendary actors Lisa McCune and Catherine McClements star in the story of a woman who detaches herself from her life and finds herself among a group of cloistered nuns, in a Malthouse Theatre production in association with Jacaranda Productions.
Take the mic for the world premiere of MAGIC SING: Pinoy Pop Power! – an evening of power ballads, politics and fierce Filo pride. While rock ‘n’ roll and punk shaped the sound of protest in the West, Filipinos found an emotional outlet in the sky-high vocals of Whitney, Celine and Mariah, belted down the (Magic Sing) mic at every family function and karaoke bar across the diaspora, from the 1986 People Power Revolution through the waves of migration that followed.
From Wednesday 7 July, Christina O’Neill (All About Eve, My Brilliant Career) leads a trio of Filipino-Australian divas, directed and choreographed by Yvette Lee, and created by cabaret goddess extraordinaire Victoria Falconer (HOUSE OF ROT, My Brilliant Career) and Dean Bryant.
From Friday 23 July, the Beckett is haunted by the world premiere of The Turn of the Screw, Keziah Warner’s (Hour of the Wolf, Nosferatu) one-person adaptation of Henry James’ gothic horror. Tuuli Narkle (NCIS: Sydney, Mystery Road: Origin) is a young woman with no money, no work and a frosty share house who takes a mysterious job minding two children at Bly Manor, only to find her dream of Downton Abbey turns out to be a lot more The Shining. Directed by Jessica Arthur (GAME. SET. MATCH., Koreaboo), it looks the audience dead in the eye and asks: do you believe me?
Yve Blake (FANGIRLS, Mackenzie) takes the most illegal thoughts you’ve ever had about your family and screams them out loud in the world premiere of the Dean Bryant-directed Jackpot, from Friday 13 August. Over one sleepless night and a shared bottle of whiskey, two sisters negotiate who will care for their mother in a pitch-black comedy exploring family obligation, housing inequality and what we owe our parents, and what they owe us.
Next year’s season will also host the world premiere of Lucy from Friday 17 September, written by and starring Thomas Weatherall and directed by Dean Bryant. Sam and Lucy fall for each other fast and forever: he’s darkness, she’s all light; he’s cautious, she’s impulsive. As time goes on, Sam finds Lucy has more in common with him than he thought, as the despair that drew them together starts to drag her down.
Weatherall (AACTA-nominated for The Narrow Road to the Deep North; Heartbreak High) follows his rapturously received solo debut Blue with his first Melbourne stage work, a story about the changing shape of a relationship, and what to do when you no longer recognise it.
From Friday 12 November, Bloomshed (Pride and Prejudice) return to Malthouse with the world premiere of Gone With The Wind – an unflinching adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s classic that holds a mirror to the Australian mythos. Scarlett O’Hara hates politics. She likes parties, cakes and green dresses that show off her 13-inch waist. But when a surprise election is called and the men rush off to fight the ‘good fight’, her comfortable world of instant gratification turns upside down.
Their urgent response to a polarised Australia is fierce, funny and all about franking credits, with marginal seats turning orange faster than saying the words, “please explain”. Wrapped in the warm cloak of a whirlwind romance, it asks whether nostalgia for a world that never existed is the answer.
ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING:
From Thursday 6 May, YIRRAMBOI marks ten years, cracking open the heart of Naarm to reveal the hum of Country beneath. First Peoples have shaped worlds, physical, spiritual and ancestral, guided by lore, kinship and an unbroken relationship with Country, through governance systems, knowledge and ceremonial practices that were not only sophisticated but opulent, and through languages that map entire ecologies and songlines that track time, stars and kinship across thousands of generations. In this world, the festival says, we are not dreaming of what might come, we are embodying what already is.
The much-loved Malthouse Comedy returns from Wednesday 24 March, taking over the entire venue as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Since 2016, Malthouse Theatre has curated a massive program of comedy for the festival, bringing some of the most exciting names in comedy alongside emerging local artists to its packed-out venues, and attracting more than 23,000 people annually – curated and presented by Malthouse Theatre.
Tickets for Malthouse Theatre’s 2027 season are now on sale. An early bird offer of 25% off every 2027 Malthouse Theatre production is available until 21 October 2026. For more information, visit: www.malthousetheatre.com.au for details.
Images: The Tartuffe™ – photo by Giulia McGauran | swim – photo by Laura Du Vé | Stone Yard Devotional – photo by Nicole Reed | MAGIC SING: Pinoy Pop Power! – photo by Gianna Rizzo | The Turn of the Screw – photo by Sulaiman Enayatzada (LazyFair) | Jackpot – photo by Gianna Rizzo | Lucy – photo by Laura Du Vé | Gone With The Wind – photo by Giulia McGauran