Time Out Sydney Arts & Culture Awards 2024: Best Play Nominees

Visitors are meant to leave. Right? The premiere of Jane Harrison’s The Visitors at the Sydney Opera House in 2023 marked the second rendition of the acclaimed play since its smash-hit debut at Sydney Festival in early 2020. The performance, directed by the legendary Wesley Enoch and produced by Moogahlin Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company, is a fantastically critical and speculative historical fiction that left audiences inspired and hopeful. 

Griffin Theatre Company took a big swing when deciding on a production to farewell their legendary home at the Stables in Kings Cross (it's currently closed down for a major renovation), and it paid off. A fitting send-off for the home of Aussie writing, The Lewis Trilogy is a loaded triple-bill (five hours of theatre in total!) spotlighting the work of legendary playwright Louis Nowra and his beloved adopted home city of Sydney. An epic experience that could be attempted over multiple evenings or an entire Sunday, this nostalgic and immense production is as much a love letter to Nowra's writing as it is to the spirit of Kings Cross, to Aussie theatre, and to community, wherever we may find it. 

An epic tale of magical realism and political defiance, The Master and Margarita is a novel that was written in secrecy by Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov under Stalin’s regime. Featuring a giant cat, a nude witch and the Devil himself – Belvoir St Theatre blessed theatregoers in Surry Hills with an even more outrageous adaptation of this story some 55 years later in 2023. Developed during Covid lockdowns by artistic director Eamon Flack and a troupe of unemployed actors, this production was peak theatre. A totally ridiculous and transformative experience, you just had to be there. 

Blaque Showgirls is proof that you can make an important statement with sequins, stupidity and bin chicken burlesque. Griffin Theatre implanted a portal to the bright lights of Brisvegas in Kings Cross for this wild show – as reflected through the funhouse-mirror imagination of one of the country’s most cunning writers, Nakkiah Lui. When naive, fair-skinned Sarah gets a whiff of evidence of her Indigenous ancestry, she high-tails it to the glitziest casino in Brisvegas. Her mission? To land a role in the First Nations burlesque spectacular “Blaque Showgirls” – by any means necessary. 

History was made during this year’s Sydney Mardi Gras, with the historic queer palace of Erskineville's Imperial Hotel hosting the first ever play to take place within its hallowed walls. And there really couldn’t be a more fitting location than a nightclub basement for the debut of Back to Birdy – a candid and humorous exploration of friendship, identity politics and the evolving landscape of queer spaces. With a raw and honest script developed with community consultation and the support of Fruit Box Theatre, the top-notch performances in this tear-jerker are a case for why actors with lived experience should be cast to play characters from marginalised groups whenever possible.