The best shows to see in Sydney this month

Set in Madrid, the narrative action of Song Of First Desire occupies two distinct time frames. In the present day, acerbic twins Luis (Jorge Muriel) and Julia (Kerry Fox) are dealing with the mental decline of their ageing mother, Camelia (Sarah Peirse). Meanwhile, in 1968, where Spain is under the fascist Franco regime, police commander Carlos (Muriel again) and his wife Carmen (Fox again) find their preparations for their daughter’s wedding disrupted when the latter encounters Margarita (Peirse), a woman who seems to know them from the past.

Picnic at Hanging Rock can make a strong claim for being the most important Australian artistic work of the 20th century, and one that still casts a shadow over the 21st. This year marks the film’s 50th anniversary, and this haunting new production for Sydney Theatre Company’s 2025 season is the latest of numerous stage adaptations. This production takes an experimental direction that ramps up the themes of horror and suspense, keeping the audience off kilter, forcing us to engage with a conceptual realm where time, space, and identity are malleable.

A fascinating piece of queer dramatic history based on a true story, The Children’s Hour was the first play from legendary American playwright Lillian Hellman. It premiered on Broadway in 1934, a time when the mention of homosexuality on stage was illegal in New York State. Despite the fact that it played 691 shows to eager audiences, it was banned from performance in London, Boston and Chicago. This new version directed by Kim Hardwick in the intimate Old Fitz Theatre is compelling and important viewing. 

Sydney Theatre Company’s new production of Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles marks the second time this comedic-yet-tense finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama has appeared on the Sydney stage. With a focus on struggle, resilience and change in both the personal and generational senses, the play explores the evolving relationship between 21-year-old Leo (Shiv Palekar, The Tempest) and his 91-year-old grandmother, Vera (Nancye Hayes). 

Director Patrick Kennedy (Sophia=(Wisdom) Part 3: The Cliffs) brings his signature surrealist style to this punk retelling of the 1889 Cleveland Street Scandal from British playwright James Fritz at the New Theatre. The play reimagines the scandal – in which a secret gay brothel, frequented by a number of gentlemen and staffed by post boys, was discovered in 19th-century London – as a collage of scenes between aristocrats, arrested post boy Charlie and his mother Emily, and even glimpses into Queen Victoria’s conversations with God. 

Alana Valentine’s new play Nucleus asks whether love can survive fundamental differences between two people, or is it somehow separate? Prickly and sombre, it has its central duo of boomer one-night-standers at odds on the trickier level of personal values, on opposite sides of the nuclear power debate... She’s as sharp-tongued as he is cantankerous, and both have outsized curiosity, stubbornness and ego.

Aria is a tasteful black comedy for Kirribilli’s Ensemble Theatre, doing the job its audience wants it to do – it offers plenty of laughs, a few political jabs here and there, but never pushes the envelope too far, with veteran playwright David Williamson playing it safe in this brand new offering. The play has the airs of Don’s Party for the upper echelons of society, but without the depth of Williamson’s more well-known works.

If you’re a fan of the world's favourite roleplay game, you won't want to miss the Aussie debut of this interactive show inspired by the game; it’s making its Aussie debut at the Sydney Opera House this summer. With a cast of just five actors and more than 30 playable characters, the ever-changing play brings audiences into a magical world where they play a key role in building the narrative.