Hayes Theatre Co is going big in 2027, taking its distinctive brand of musical theatre beyond its Potts Point home while presenting its biggest season to date under outgoing artistic directors Richard Carroll and Victoria Falconer.

Announced as Hayes in New Places, the 2027 program will see the company venture into two larger Sydney venues – Carriageworks and Foundry Theatre – while continuing an eight-production program at the Hayes Theatre itself.

The expansion marks a new chapter for the company as Carroll and Falconer prepare for their final year as artistic directors, with the pair promising a season that ranges from ambitious new Australian work and immersive theatre to cabaret, comedy, opera, contemporary musical theatre and classics.

The cast of Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical. Photo © John McRae

Steven Kramer’s Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical, returns after its sell-out Hayes season in 2025 and a haul of Sydney Theatre Awards, including Best Production of a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical for Sheridan Harbridge and Best Performance in a Leading Role in a Musical for Joel Granger.

Starring Granger and directed again by Harbridge, the expanded production moves to Carriageworks from 8 July to 8 August before embarking on a national tour, with seasons including Melbourne Theatre Company, Merrigong Theatre Company, Geelong Arts Centre and The Art House Wyong.

The other major off-site production is the world premiere of Mack the Knife, created by Carroll, Falconer and Jordan Shea. Opening at Foundry Theatre from 5 October, the work reimagines the world of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera as an immersive rock-cabaret experience.

The audience enters Peachums, an underground bar and thieves’ den inspired by 1980s Kings Cross nightclubs, a Spiegeltent and a Dickensian opium den, before becoming part of the action as the story unfolds inside the theatre.

Richard Carroll and Victoria Falconer, Artistic Directors of the Hayes Theatre Co. Photo supplied

Based on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera as well as The Threepenny Opera, Mack The Knife will feature original songs and audience participation, with the crowd enlisted to help characters including Polly, Macheath and Mayor Tiger Brown navigate a world of criminal schemes, shifting loyalties and competing ambitions.

Back at Hayes, the 2027 season opens on 13 January with the world premiere concert Peter Allen: Not the Boy Next Door, directed by Hayden Tonazzi with arrangements and musical direction by Steven Kramer. Four vocalists and a live band will celebrate the Australian entertainer’s songbook, from I Go to Rio and Don’t Cry Out Loud to I Still Call Australia Home.

February brings Mad March Theatre Co’s production of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Lucky Stiff, directed by Claudia Barrie, followed in April by the return of House of Rot. Created by Dino Dimitriadis and Falconer and starring Paul Capsis and Adam Noviello, the latter combines cabaret, music and theatrical madness in a work inspired loosely by the cult documentary Grey Gardens (read the Limelight review).

Adam Noviello and Paul Capsis in House of Rot. Photo © Gianna Rizzo

The Australian premiere of Swept Away arrives in May, with Drew Livingston directing the folk/rock musical by John Logan and the Avett Brothers. Set in 1888 during the final years of the whaling trade, it follows two brothers, a ship’s captain and first mate, stranded in a lifeboat after their ship is wrecked.

In July, Jacinta John directs a new production of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Next to Normal, the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical about the Goodman family and the realities beneath their seemingly conventional suburban life.

Opera gets the Hayes treatment in August with Operantics and Andrew Greene’s Lyric Arts production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, directed by Matthew Barclay. Performed in Italian with English captions, the production promises a vibrant reimagining of Mozart’s comedy of love, fidelity and mistaken identity.

Sydney Theatre Award winner Cameron Mitchell returns in September to direct and choreograph Be More Chill, Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz’s cult coming-of-age musical about an awkward teenager who acquires a quantum supercomputer chip promising to make him popular.

The season closes from 29 October with the Australian premiere of Flowers for Mrs Harris, starring Rachael Beck as Ada Harris, a cleaner whose discovery of a designer dress inspires an unlikely journey of adventure and self-discovery. Julia Robertson directs the musical by Richard Taylor and Rachel Wagstaff.

Hayes Theatre Co also continues its commitment to new and neglected work. The Festival of New Work returns for a fourth year, extended to three weeks, while the Winter Cabaret Festival returns in June under a new banner – Flare.

The company’s Neglected Musicals series returns and will feature 1776 in March, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in May and Dames at Sea in October.

Other returning programs include Theys at the Hayes, Victoria Falconer’s Parlour Night, Musical Bang Bang, Home Grown, An Evening With … and Carols by Cabaret.

Hayes Theatre Company subscriptions are on sale now, with individual productions going on sale at various times over the coming months. Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical is now on sale.