The Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne) 2025 season heralds a year of epic theatrics, lush music theatre, in-your-face drama, virtuosic horror, and uplifting joy.
The 2025 season features seven inspired production from Australian and international theatre makers, showing that Malthouse is committed to making sure the arts are accessible to more people, more often.
Audiences are encouraged to step out of their daily lives and into an alternative world.
“This season of theatre is for the curious who are seeking adrenaline, fun, rich ideas, and who want to explore what theatre can be. We’ve found the most enlivening ideas from artists at the peak of their craft; every production is different, and we have made it price accessible for you to see them all throughout the year,” Artistic Director Matthew Lutton says.
Opening the season is ‘Truth’, a brand-new work from Patricia Cornelius. It’s the story of Julian Assange, from his early teenage years in Melbourne through to his hacking days, the founding of WikiLeaks, and his subsequent house arrest.
Next up is ‘A Nightime Travesty’ – an epic, First Nations vaudevillian musical nightmare. It’s equal parts sardonic, cheeky, and heartbreaking. Expect explosions, zany costumes, gruesome decapitations, existential horror, Blak humour, romance, genocide, blasphemy, and a raucous live band.
As part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival, as always, is Malthouse Comedy. Featuring local and international guests, projects of all scales will take over Malthouse with around 20 different performances on offer.
'Troy'
Award-winning actor Paula Arundell is set to send pulses skyrocketing with ‘The Birds’. Lights off, headphones on. Audiences will be immersed in a theatrical feat of audio engineering, with a soundscape flying feathers, murderous swoops, and thrilling carnage in this one-woman show.
The most performed playwright in the history of Iranian theatre Nassim Soleimanpour and acclaimed director Omar Elerian present ‘ECHO: Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen’. It’s a script no one has seen, and an experience audiences won’t forget, as a new performer takes to the stage each night, not knowing what’s going to be asked of them.
Pony Cam presents their first ever mainstage commission with ‘The Orchard’, based on Anton Chekhov’s play. There’ll be indecision, real stories, a person in a tree costume, lots of cling wrap, and a borrowed chainsaw.
Audiences will be transported when ‘Troy’ takes them to a time when gods walked among us, epic battles were fought on the sands of time, and no one escaped the hand of violence. Directed by Matthew Lutton and starring Geraldine Hakewill, Mark Leonard Winter, Paula Arundell, Danny Ball and more, it’s a physically demanding and hauntingly poetic performance under the eyes of the Trojan horse.
Finally, the 2025 season culminates with the return of Meow Meow, the celebrated cabaret performer, in ‘Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes’. She’s the chanteuse of modern cabaret, regularly performing the world over. A chorus of hairy fawns, singing swans and showgirl stars. . . A frenetic song-and-dance into meaning.
Check out the full programme.
Malthouse Theatre’s (Melbourne) 2025 season begins with ‘Truth’ in February.
