Source : the age
A reimagining of a secret meeting between Bob Hawke, Kerry Packer and cricket legend Clive Lloyd, a solo performance of Richard III by Kate Mulvany, and a new production of War of the Worlds are among the major offerings in Melbourne Theatre Company’s newly unveiled program for 2027.
The all-star line-up also includes Rachel Griffiths, Sigrid Thornton, Nadine Garner (and even Phar Lap), while actors Sheridan Harbridge and Zindzi Okenyo will also direct.
“I want audiences to experience the breadth of what theatre can be,” says MTC artistic director and CEO Anne-Louise Sarks. In a season of 11 works, six of them are world premieres, and seven are by Australian writers.
Rebels by Julian Larnach, starring Alpha Kargbo as former West Indies cricket captain Clive Lloyd, will take audiences back to January 1985, to a meeting where the worlds of politics, media and sport collided. “I’ve always been interested in how we make political change in this country,” says Larnach.
While researching the Hawke era, two articles grabbed his attention – one in The New York Times (“It was essentially a review of Australia, and it described this country that was flooded with cash that was at risk of having its moral fibre snapping”) and another by The Age’s chief cricket writer Daniel Brettig about a secret meeting.
“My brain, as it wants to do, started connecting the dots around that, and started going, ‘What if the plan to save Australian cricket was actually about saving the soul of the nation?’”
Details of the actual meeting, where Hawke offered Lloyd the opportunity to build a new Australian cricket team, are scant. “We know the meeting occurred. We know that Hawke wanted to offer Clive Lloyd this job, and that that never happened. And yeah – that’s kind of it.”
Another premiere production in the 2027 season is a new interpretation of Richard III. Kate Mulvany – now starring in Netflix’s hit adaptation of My Brilliant Career – first took on the role of Richard in Bell Shakespeare’s 2017 production to great critical acclaim, and in 2027 will be taking that performance further in a new solo show.
After inhabiting the character for so long, she says the thing that struck her about the character was his aloneness.
“He has to invent worlds within himself because his exterior world just doesn’t want him around,” she explains. So, what if, in this version we see all of the characters through Richard’s eyes; filtered through his inner world? “It doesn’t feel like it’s me playing all of the characters completely differently – it’s me playing Richard playing the characters, which is a very different take.”
Mulvany, who lives with the same severe scoliosis as Richard III, hers as a result of radiation treatment for childhood cancer, has a strong understanding of the character. “Shakespeare’s Richard is used and discarded because of his disability, and he’s literally called a dog, bunch-backed toad. He’s called deformed, unfinished, a homicide, and if you call someone a dog, they are going to bite eventually,” she says.
“I work now with so many disabled artists, and you know, we love Richard. He’s ours – but he’s only really become ours in the past 10 years because for so many years it was male, able-bodied kind of Brits playing him, and now we’ve busted down that door.
“The Bell show allowed me to reveal my full disability, the extent of it, for the first time. And once you’ve had the power to do that, and you own that pride, you want to take it further, and you want more people to sort of come and join the fun,” she says. “I hope to be able to give this play adaptation to any disabled actor, and to give them the opportunity to also play able-bodied characters,” she says. “I’m really, really lucky, but many, many, many other disabled actors just simply do not get the chance to play Lady Anne or Queen Margaret or King Edward.”
The 2027 season announcement comes in the wake of MTC posting a $3.9 million net deficit for 2025, but Sarks points to the 2026 season, and in particular the success of local shows West Gate, The Jungle and the Sea and My Brilliant Career, as a reason to be optimistic.
“The beautiful thing about 2026 is that the works that have the most demand – that there is clearly a hunger for from audiences – are new Australian works, and that was very emboldening because that has been the core of everything we’re about at MTC and those are the works that are resonating and that are selling out our seasons,” she says.
“It really has galvanised that that strategy that I came to the company with, which is to tell stories about us for us. And the beauty in 2027 is that these stories are hyperlocal and also global.”
The season kicks off with Stereophonic, featuring music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler and starring Geraldine Hakewill and Alex Malone. Sarks will direct John Proctor is the Villain, which follows an acclaimed season on Broadway, and also has a film in the works starring Sadie Sink. Award-winning author Claire G. Coleman has written a new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.
Sarah Goodes will direct Andrew Bovell’s Every Second Wednesday. Sheridan Harbridge will direct Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical. Dirty Diamonds, a co-production with Sydney’s Belvoir takes inspiration from the Argyle diamond mine heist and stars Ruby Henaway and winner of the 2026 Logie award for Most Popular New Talent, Lila McGuire. Zindzi Okenyo will direct Winsome Pinnock’s The Authenticator. Sigrid Thornton, Nadine Garner and Erik Thomson will star in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. Finishing the season, Rachel Griffiths will star in Clarice, a play telling the story of artist Clarice Beckett, marking her first performance with MTC in 20 years.
The upcoming season is both exciting and ambitious. “I love to be told a story. I always have – and I think there’s something very human and shared about that need,” says Sarks. “And it is more important than ever, as we feel more fractured and more worn down by the world, to stop and to come together and to listen and to be surprised and to discover something new.”
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