Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre presents nine plays in 2025, with something for everyone.
Next year’s audiences can expect new Australian work, multi-layered and joyful Indigenous stories, adaptations, a Shakespeare work, and some classics. . . Done the Belvoir way.
“Belvoir is a great big ongoing unfinished story made up of all the stories we tell, have ever told, and are yet to tell. Every new show adds to this gargantuan decades-long group-improvisation,” Belvoir Artistic Director Eamon Flack says.
“It is a tale told by thousands. An epic hundreds of episodes long. Full of heroism and feats of daring. Ever-changing. Full of unexpectedness and happy accident. Belonging to everyone and no one. Turning good capitalist dollars into vanishing acts of theatricality. A river of life. A celebration. We’d love you to join us – again or for the first time – for another year of keeping the whole shebang going.”
The season opens with ‘Jacky’, a Melbourne Theatre Company production co-presented with Sydney Festival. It’s an award-winning play of private life, work life, and that thing called ‘culture’ – visiting Belvoir after an acclaimed premiere season in Melbourne.
Then there’s ‘Song Of First Desire’, where Camelia is losing her grip – lost between the past and the present. It’s a play of passion, history and politics, intimate in its detail and epic in storytelling, written originally for an acclaimed theatre collective in Madrid.
‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ follows Cheryl, Lulu and Queenie – they’re young, and life is glorious. . . But their lives, Redfern and the country are all about to change as they prepare for the Deb Ball. It’s a sharp new play from Gumbaynggirr/Wiradjuri woman Dalara Williams paying respect to a generation which led the way and to black women who won’t take a backward step.
In another co-production with Melbourne Theatre Company, ‘The Wrong Gods’ is a gripping new play from S. Shakthidharan melding mother and daughter struggle with the economics of progress.
‘The Spare Room’ is based on the novel by Helen Garner. When Helen’s old friend Nicola comes to town for treatment, it makes sense that she’d stay in the spare room. Nicola has put her faith in a shady, alternative cancer clinic. . . And as the sleepless nights rack up, a short stay in the spare room becomes a loving, maddening battle for life.
With Andrew Henry Presents, ‘Grief Is The Thing With Feathers’ sees two young boys grappling with the sudden death of their mother. An odd bird, Crow, arrives – trickster, babysitter, provocateur, healer. Based on the novel by Max Porter.
Next up is a joyous new adaptation of ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf, from creators Elsie Yager and Carissa Licciardello. Orlando sets out in search of love, life, and destiny. . . But he has to travel through 400 years to find it.
‘Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes’ is a co-production with Black Swan State Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre. . . From a chorus of hairy fawns to singing swans and showgirl stars, it’s an unforgettable song-and-dance into meaning, and a musical celebration sure to shock.
The 2025 season closes with a classic – ‘The True History Of The Life And Death Of King Lear And His Three Daughters’, by none other than William Shakespeare himself. Arguably Shakespeare’s greatest play, exploring what happens when the trapping of privilege, education and civilisation are stripped away. . . An energised, classic Belvoir production.
Belvoir St Theatre’s 2025 season begins with ‘Jacky’ from 16 January.
