The best things to do in Sydney this February

For people of Islamic faith, Ramadan is the most sacred month of the year. During this time, Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. But once the sun sets, iftar begins – a fast-breaking feast that runs late into the night, bringing family and friends together to enjoy an array of rich treats and moreish morsels. To coincide with this time of year, Sydney’s popular month-long celebration Lakemba Nights is back. This year’s event will be a little different, running every Thursday to Sunday from February 27 to March 30, 2025. What time does Lakemba Nights during Ramadan open and close? From 6pm until 2am, Thursday through to Sunday, more than 60 local businesses will transform Lakemba’s Haldon Street into a vibrant, global food bazaar with traditional cuisine from Indonesia, Burma, Pakistan, Lebanon, the Cocos Islands, Syria and more. It’s not only Sydney’s Muslim communities that comes together during Lakemba Nights – people of all backgrounds are welcome to flock to sample the fare of pop-up kitchens and food trucks lining Haldon Street. What started as a single street barbeque back in 2012 has grown into what many consider one of Australia's best places to celebrate the ancient tradition, with last year's event drawing in more than one million people across the month. What kind of food will there be? Break fast with with roti and gentle lentil curries from the Cocos Islands; Malaysia's famously buttery grilled pastry parcels, murtabak; and haleem, the king of curries from...

The genre-defying, multi-award-winning, smash-hit Broadway sensation, Hadestown has finally made its way down to Sydneytown – and it’s unlike any musical you’ve ever seen or heard. With industrial steampunk aesthetics, a soulful jazz-folk fusion, and even a comment on our dying world, this is a brave new world for musical theatre. The Down Under debut of Hadestown opened at the Theatre Royal Sydney to a ready-made fanbase. There’s a lot of hype surrounding this show – the Broadway production picked up eight Tony Awards (including Best Musical for 2019) and still plays to packed houses today, and there’s also the highly successful West End production and the North American tour.  An incisive adaptation of the age-old myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Hadestown is the brainchild of indie-folk musician Anaïs Mitchell (with very clear influences from Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, who appeared on the 2010 studio album). It started its life as a song cycle, and then a studio album, and now it’s a fully-formed stage musical with a dedicated international following. Hadestown is a spectacular challenge to what we think a musical is and can be Like many fans, I discovered Hadestown via the studio album and the Broadway recording. With such a strong, atmospheric tone, the music doesn’t even need visuals to shine – featuring everything from chugging vocal sounds, deep growling singing, floating falsettos, muted trombones, a train whistle, and heavy acoustic guitars. Hadestown is the...

In the mood for a street party? We’ve got good news. City of Sydney’s street party series – aptly named Sydney Streets – is back for 2025, with festival-style street parties popping up across the city for six Saturdays this summer and autumn. Designed to celebrate the local community, Sydney Streets is taking over high streets across the city over the next few months, with the first one transforming Potts Point’s Macleay Street on Saturday, February 15. Kicking off at 11am and running into the night, the events will see the host streets closed to traffic – making space for outdoor dining, roving entertainment and live performance. Following a smoking ceremony and Welcome to Country facilitated by traditional custodians of the land, activities at the various events will range from origami workshops to dog agility, with each event specific to its suburb. Local businesses will be hosting pop-up stalls, with the neighbouring restaurants and shops included in the action. Although the specific businesses and events will vary, Sydneysiders can expect family-friendly fun and music into the night across the board. After the Macleay Street event on Saturday, February 15, Sydney Streets will take over Darlinghurst’s bustling Stanley Street on Saturday, February 22, Harris Street in Pyrmont on March 8, Glebe Point Road on Saturday, March 15, Redfern Street on Saturday, March 29 and Crown Street in Surry Hills on Saturday, April 5. Keen? You can learn more over here.  Stay in the loop:...

It’s summertime in the Harbour City, and you know you can't go wrong with some picnic blankets, antipasto snacks, and live music. Bonus points if there's a sunset and a harbour view involved.  Sunset Sessions – Cockatoo Island's family-friendly outdoor gig series – is back and running every Saturday evening from January 11 to April 5 (except February 8, when the island will be taken over by the Nowhere Festival). A carefully curated line-up of local and not-so-local acts (brought together by Sydney tastemakers The Music & Booze Co) will be playing on the lawn of the Biloela House every Saturday evening, where there will be grazing boxes and refreshments aplenty.  There's a broad range of talents to take in, with artists hailing from all over Australia – with a mix acoustic sets, folk, contemporary and feel-good sounds. Highlights from the line-up so far include First Nations traditional language storyteller Maanyung, sibling doo-wop duo Surely Shirley and etherial physch spaceman Misty Lanes, with more acts still to be announced.You can catch Sunset Sessions on Saturdays from 5.30pm, but get there early when the gates open at 5pm to soak in the atmosphere. Tickets are $35, and children under 12 can attend for free. If you find yourself wanting more of Cockatoo Island’s out-of-this-world views, you can turn your Sunset Session into a sunrise by booking a night at the island’s heritage listed lodgings or the waterfront campground. For the first few events (from January 11...

The fathers of modern musical theatre, Gilbert and Sullivan’s very silly (and very clever) songs from over a century ago have influenced everything from modern political parody to the work of Stephen Sondheim and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Their approach to storytelling and grand musical humour included, most importantly: bringing absurd premises to their “logical” conclusions, employing and supporting amateur actors, and parodying important composers and writers of their time in order to make them accessible to middle class punters.  In Sydney, the Hayes Theatre Co brings a similar spirit to its theatremaking – from supporting emerging artists, to providing a place for the modern musical to entertain and provoke larger discussions about the ridiculousness of being alive. So, it makes a lot of sense that Richard Carroll (co-artistic director of the Hayes) would bring us a swashbuckling new take on Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operetta (or musical, before musicals were conceived of) – The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty.  As director and adaptor, Carroll continues Gilbert and Sullivan’s grand tradition of silliness,  shrinking The Pirates of Penzance down to a very Hayes size, with a plucky cast of just five actors (for reference, most productions would usually have a cast of around 20) – along with some precarious participation from the audience members who find themselves seated amidst the action. The result? A playful, stripped back show that leaves everyone...

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).  After Leo’s cross-country cycling trip goes terribly wrong, no one is more surprised than Vera when he turns up on the doorstep of her Greenwich Village apartment in the middle of the night. Over the course of this one-act drama, the pair navigates grief, identity, generational differences, and the weight of the past.  Kenneth Moraleda’s direction brings out the play’s delicate balance of humour and emotional depth, ensuring that each moment feels intimate and impactful, and a sense of the love and care between Leo and Vera is quickly established. However, something about this play left this reviewer wanting more. [Nancye] Hayes is a dynamic performer...with fantastic comedic timing Although both Leo and Vera’s motivations remain uncertain, one thing is made clear: both protagonists are staunchly counter-cultural ‘lefties’. But this doesn’t mean they always see eye to eye. Leo is an impassioned young Obama-era ‘woke-ist’ who’s critical of the 'institution' – although his girlfriend Bec (Ariadne Sgouros, Belvoir’s The Curious Incident of the...

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, and you can see the pattern by now, surely), a woman who seems to know them from the past. “The past” in this case is the play’s third temporal setting: the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 and the White Terror that followed, in which Franco’s Nationalists enacted bloody purges and reprisals on the Spanish people, replete with mass extrajudicial executions and the torture of suspected dissidents. None of the on-stage action takes place in that period, but everything we see is rooted there – the sins of the past cast a heavy pall over the characters and the substance of the play itself, which deals with generational trauma, family secrets, incest, perversity, colonialism, and the rhyming nature of history, both personal and political. These are familiar themes for acclaimed Australian playwright Andrew Bovell. His 2008 play When the Rain Stopped Falling covers similar territory, and employs a comparably twisty approach to chronology. Song Of First Desire sees Bovell reteaming with...

Let’s just start by saying I’m not a D&D player. I’ve played a couple of times with my family, led by my teenage son as Dungeon Master, but that was just to show interest in something he loves. So I do understand the basics – that said, you don’t need any prior knowledge of D&D to get swept up in the magic that is Dungeons and Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern. If anything, this show is probably the best way I’ve found so far to get a better grasp on the complex game that is D&D. This is an interactive show that began in New York as an Off-Broadway production – the same director, Michael Fell, also rehearsed with the Australian cast. In what ways is it interactive? The story lies in the audience’s hands, as well as with the roll of the 20-sided dice.  As you enter The Studio at the Sydney Opera House, you pick a coloured sticker from a basket. Depending on what colour you choose, you get aligned with one of the three classes: Warrior, Mage (Wizard) or Assassin/Entertainer. Throughout the show, you make decisions for the character in your assigned class, mostly by choosing options via your mobile phone (after scanning a QR code) – and sometimes just by yelling out. (Top tip:Make sure you turn up with a fully-charged phone.) You answer polls and take part in little games to choose what character the actors play, then make decisions or see the outcomes of characters’ actions. Dice rolls are directed by the Dungeon Master, played by the charismatic Cody Simpson-lookalike William...

Ah, the Titanic. An unsinkable cultural icon, the “Ship of Dreams” has appeared in almost as many movies and stage productions as the songs of Canada’s queen of the power ballad, Céline Dion. It’s even got a two-and-a-half-hour (surprisingly serious) movie musical adaptation based on Maury Yeston’s Titanic: the Musical. Although, none can hold a candle to the cultural impact of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster – you know, the one with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. So, with nostalgia being such hot property right now, it was only a matter of time before we got the camp-as-hell musical fantasia made-for-and-by-the-gays that is Titanique. Created by Marla Mindelle (who originated the role of Céline Dion – well, as imagined in this show), Constantine Rousouli (who originated the role of Jack) and director Tye Blue (whose countless industry credits include working on the casting team of RuPaul’s Drag Race), Titanique is revisionist history at its best. Loaded with Céline Dion’s greatest bangers, it casts Queen Dion herself (played so wonderfully by cabaret legend Marney McQueen here in Aus) as the narrator of the tragic tale, who continuously places herself at the center of the action – quite literally – much to Jack and Rose’s repeated dismay. It brings the campness of the film to the front, with Stephen Anderson (Mary Poppins) playing Rose’s awful mother Ruth (complete with a bird’s nest headpiece), and Abu Kebe (Choirboy) playing a brilliant, tear-jerking drag parody...

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. This tale of blind prejudice focuses around the matriarchal Monique (Tracy Mann, Belvoir’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime), whose adult sons are the jewel of her eye as she refuses to let go of the past. A true narcissist to her bones, Monique seemingly gave up her career as an opera singer for love and family, despite her incessant insistence that she could have been the next big thing. The need for perfection now overrules everything in the path of Monique’s lifestyle, with her son’s wives needing to be perfect “acquisitions for the family” rather than loving partners for her boys that can do no wrong. But now, the wives have had enough, and Monique is in for a rude awakening. Tracy Mann is the perfect step-monster-in-law; whose vanity blinds her to the broken shards of a family in front of her Australia’s most prolific playwright, Williamson’s earlier works explored the depths of the working classes’ struggles against the classist turmoil of white Australia. Now, we’re on the other side of the class divide, and while the...