Sydney Theatre Company (STC) has unveiled a spectacular slate of their 2025 season – the last under the stewardship of outgoing artistic director Kip Williams. Offering a mix of classic works, literary adaptations and bold new voices, the coming year promises a wealth of pleasures for dedicated theatregoers and new aficionados alike.
It’s the end of an era for STC, as Williams hands over the reins after eight seasons, and for his final go-round he’s put together a genuinely impressive selection – no mean feat considering the superb quality of the company’s work over the course of his tenure. We checked in with Williams to get his take on each of STC’s upcoming productions.
4000 Miles (Wharf 1 Theatre, Feb 3-Mar 23)
By Amy Herzog; Directed by Kenneth Moraleda
Nancy Hayes and Shiv Palekar play a grandmother and grandson, respectively, who find themselves unlikely roommates after the former shows up on the latter’s doorstep, having abandoned a cross-country bike trip. 4000 Miles is a warm, poignant comedy about cross-generational connection.
Kip Williams says: “Amy Herzog's finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. These are really works that get the ways in which humans struggle to communicate, and the paths offered to us to be able to find a greater understanding of one another.”
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Feb 17-Apr 5)
By Tom Wright after Joan Lindsay; Directed by Ian Michael
Olivia De Jonge, Kirsty Marillier, Lorinda Merrypor and Masego Pitso star in this adaptation of the Australian literary classic, previously and famously brought to the screen by Peter Weir.
Kip Williams: “The Hanging Rock myth sits at the at the centre of the Australian psyche, in particular, the colonial experience. Ian and his team will bring a very fresh take, examining this story that has been interpreted in so many different ways.”
The Dictionary of Lost Words (Roslyn Packer Theatre, Mar 1-22)
By Verity Laughton, after Pip Williams; Directed by Jessica Arthur
Adapted from the lauded modern literary classic, Arkia Ashraf, Rachel Burke, Ksenja Logos and Shannen Alyce Quan star in this linguistic bildungsroman that takes us from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1880s to the First World War, examining how language can be both a gateway to expression and a tool of repression.
Kip Williams: “Dictionary is coming back. The book is so beloved, and Verity Lawton's adaptation is sublime, as is the direction of Jess Arthur. We were overwhelmed by the response to the initial season, and we’re so thrilled that it's returning.”
Bloom (Roslyn Packer Theatre, Mar 29-May 11)
By Tom Gleisner and Katie Weston; Directed by Dean Bryant
Aussie comedy legend Tom Gleisner brings us this musical comedy set in a nursing home where broke university students are offered room and board in exchange for working as carers. With Mandy McElhinney, John Waters, Evelyn Krape, Vidya Makan, Maria Mercedes, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i, John O’May, Christina O’Neill, Jackie Rees, and Slone Sudiro.
Kip Williams: “Working Dog are responsible for some of the best comedy in the last 30 years: The Castle, The Dish, Utopia. Here, Glassner is partnering with Katie Weston to create a special type of comedy that is so attuned to the sensibility of the Australian voice: our obsessions, our foibles, our aspirations and our contradictions.”
RBG: Of Many, One (Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Apr 11-May 17)
By Suzie Miller; Directed by Priscilla Jackman
Having wowed audiences on its 2024 national tour, this theatrical biography of trailblazing legal mind Ruth Bader Ginsburg returns to the STC. Heather Mitchel again plays the formidable Ginsberg as we follow her through her many battles for gender equality, in the process changing American life forever.
Kip Williams: “It's been seen by over 100,000 people nationally in 187 performances from the great Heather Mitchell. This a play that I commissioned midway through my 10 years as Artistic Director, and it's been one of the great joys working with the team across its development, and to see it have the life that it's had has been pretty spectacular.”
Happy Days (Wharf 1 Theatre, May 5-Jun 29)
By Samuel Beckett; Directed by Nick Schlieper & Pamela Rabe
Pamela Rabe is Winnie, who we meet mired up to her waist in a surreal wasteland, but nonetheless going through her usual routine. Surreal and allegorical (it’s Beckett, after all), Happy Days is a challenging and thought-provoking work that asks us to question exactly what we will ignore in the pursuit of illusory contentment.
Kip Williams: “The thing that thrills me about this particular take on that is that it's being conceived and directed by Nick Schlieper and Pam Rabe – two of the great theatre artists in this country. And Rabe will be giving her Winnie (which feels like a role crafted specifically for Pam) the gamut of human emotion and tonal complexity that [it] needs.”
Circle Mirror Transformation (Wharf 1 Theatre, Jul 12-Sep 7)
By Annie Baker; Directed by Dean Bryant
Rebecca Gibney is Marty, a passionate acting teacher in a country town who leads a group of five locals through a series of acting exercises, only for their personal dramas to affect the lesson. Ahunim Abebe and Nicholas Brown co-star.
Kip Williams: “I'm really excited for our audience to get to Annie Baker’s writing more. She's a very celebrated writer in the US and yet to be produced at STC. This is a play about what it means to be human, a kind of celebration of the hilarity and tragedy of the human condition.”
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Roslyn Packer Theatre, Aug 19-Sep 28)
By Joanna Murray-Smith after Patricia Highsmith; Directed by Sarah Goodes
Will McDonald (who plays Ca$h in Heartbreak High) is cultured con man Tom Ripley in this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s most acclaimed novel, which recently came to our screens as a hit Netflix series. Despatched to sun-soaked Italy to retrieve a plutocrat’s wayward son, Ripley takes a shine to the high life, and if he was to leave a few bodies to secure his place in the upper echelons of expat society, then so be it. Andrew McFarlane co-stars.
Kip Williams: “I think Highsmith was a prophet in the way in which she viewed a society that was obsessed with fantasy and double lives, and you need to think about the way in which people not only construct and curate their own life online, but obsessively peer into the private lives of celebrities. Ripley is the iconic story that examines that obsession.”
Whitefella Yella Tree (Wharf 1 Theatre, Sep 19-Oct 18)
By Dylan Van Den Berg; Directed by Declan Greene and Amy Sole
Two young Aboriginal people from different mobs, Ty and Neddy, are sent to keep an eye on the strange people who have come from the ocean in this love story set at the advent of Britain’s colonisation of Australia. As the pair slowly fall in love, forces beyond their understanding are changing their world forever.
Kip Williams: “We've had a long and very fruitful relationship with Griffin Theatre Company, and Tree continues that. It really looks at black queerness pre-colonisation, but then also the impacts of colonisation on First Nations conceptions of queerness. It's an amazing piece.”
The Shiralee (Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Oct 6-Nov 22)
By Kate Mulvany after D’Arcy Niland; Directed by Jessica Arthur
Kate Mulvany, Josh McConville, Aaron Pedersen and newcomer to the STC, Ziggy Resnick, bring to life the classic Australian tale of a rugged swagman and his precocious daughter who learn to rely on each other on the dusty roads of the outback.
Kip Williams: “Kate has this uncanny gift for taking these beloved Australian classics and making them feel incredibly contemporary. If you look at this trilogy of [plays] that she's written, from Harp in the South to Playing Beatie Bow, and now this, they have at their centre a narrative about a young woman finding her voice.”
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Roslyn Packer Theatre, Nov 7-Dec 14)
By Edward Albee; Directed by Sarah Goodes
Edward Albee’s triple-Pulitzer winner takes a merciless but wry look at a disintegrating marriage. Harvey Zielinski and Kat Stewart are younger couple Nick and Honey who, after a boozy university staff party, are forced to bear witness as embittered older pair Martha and George (Logie winner Kat Stewart and her IRL husband David Whiteley) lay bare all the petty disappointments and jealousies that have plagued their relationship for years.
Kip Williams: “This production from Red Stitch Theatre Company had an acclaimed season in Melbourne. Goodsie has this surgical ability to get underneath the skin of the play and create these rich, evocative, layered, poetic, micro-operas of human drama in her work, and this is the perfect chamber play for that to take place in.”
Congratulations, Get Rich! (Wharf 1 Theatre, Nov 21-Dec 14)
By Merlynn Tong; Directed by Courtney Stewart
Written by and starring Merlynn Tong (Golden Blood), this supernatural musical comedy sees her as Mandy, whose beloved karaoke bar is on the verge of closure. Luckily – or unluckily, as the case may be – the ghosts of her mother and grandmother show up on its final night to commiserate, pontificate and offer advice. Seong Hui Xuan and Kimie Tsukakoshi co-star in this co-production with La Boite Theatre and Singapore Repertory Theatre.
Kip Williams: “A very beautiful story about the relationship between mothers and daughters, about Singaporean Australian culture, about the way in which we inherit the experience and pain of our parents into our lives… and about karaoke.”
For more information about Sydney Theatre Company and what's on, head over here.
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