Malthouse Theatre has announced its 2027 season, the first full program assembled by Artistic Director and Co-CEO Dean Bryant, with eight new Australian works, including seven world premieres, spanning comedy, drama, horror, cabaret and reworkings of classic texts.

The season takes its cue from a series of questions about contemporary life: the consequences of artificial intelligence, obligations to family, the political potential of pop music, the search for meaning and the difficulty of truly knowing another person.

Dean Bryant. Photo © Ron Whitfield

Bryant says the program is designed to bring audiences together at a time when theatre competes with increasingly individualised forms of entertainment.

“Theatre gives us permission to turn off our phones, take a seat and become an audience together,” he explains.

“It’s the first season I’ve put together from start to finish, and I wanted it to be unmistakably ours: every work by Australian creators, nearly all of them world premieres, from artists taking on big questions with humour and nerve.”

The Tartuffe™. Photo © Giulia McGauran

The season opens on 19 February with The Tartuffe™, written by and starring Eddie Perfect after Molière and directed by Bryant.

Perfect’s contemporary reworking turns Tartuffe into an AI-powered hairdressing robot that becomes increasingly embedded in the life of its human owners. Karis Oka and comedian Noah Szto join Perfect in a production described by Malthouse as a dystopian comedy, following the creative team behind Victorian Opera’s Candide.

Mununjali poet Ellen van Neerven makes their stagewriting debut with swim, which receives its Victorian premiere at Malthouse from 12 May. Directed by ILBIJERRI Artistic Director Andrea James, the play follows genderfluid protagonist E at a public swimming pool, where a seemingly ordinary summer day opens into a more dreamlike exploration of identity and memory. Cynda Beare and Tahlee Fereday star.

Catherine McClements and Lisa McCune: Stoneyard Devotional. Image © Nicole Reed

Charlotte Wood’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Stone Yard Devotional is adapted for the stage by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Sarah Goodes, reuniting the pair after Julia, The Talented Mr Ripley and Switzerland. Lisa McCune and Catherine McClements star in the story of a woman who withdraws from her former life and enters a community of cloistered nuns. The production, which begins on 4 June, is presented in association with Jacaranda Productions.

Politics and popular culture collide in MAGIC SING: Pinoy Pop Power!, a new cabaret created by Victoria Falconer and Bryant. Featuring a trio of divas led by Christina O’Neill, the production explores Filipino-Australian identity and the political history of the Filipino diaspora through the emotional vocabulary of power ballads and karaoke. It runs from 7 July.

Tuuli Narkle: The Turn of the Screw. Image © Enayatzada (LazyFair)

Keziah Warner adapts Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw as a one-person gothic horror starring Tuuli Narkle. Directed by Jessica Arthur, the production places Narkle’s character in a contemporary sharehouse story that gradually turns towards the supernatural. It opens on 23 July.

Bryant slips back into the director’s chair for Yve Blake’s Jackpot, a pitch-black comedy about two sisters forced to negotiate responsibility for their mother. Opening on 13 August, the play (by the writer of Fangirls and Bell Shakespeare’s recent MacKenzie) takes in family obligation, housing inequality and the question of what children owe their parents – and what parents owe their children.

Thomas Weatherall follows his acclaimed solo debut Blue with Lucy, written and performed by Weatherall and directed by Bryant. Opening on 17 September, the work traces a relationship between Sam and Lucy as the qualities that initially draw them together become entangled with a deepening despair.

Bloomshed: Gone with the Wind. Photo © Giulia McGauran

The main season concludes in November with Bloomshed’s Gone With The Wind, an adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel that turns its attention to Australian political culture. Scarlett O’Hara finds her world disrupted by a surprise election, as Bloomshed uses the familiar romance to examine polarisation, marginal seats and nostalgia for an imagined past.

Alongside the eight productions, Malthouse will host the tenth-anniversary edition of YIRRAMBOI from 6 May, with the festival taking over the venue, as well as Malthouse Comedy from 24 March as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The comedy program has been presented by Malthouse since 2016 and attracts more than 23,000 people annually.

For more information on Malthouse Theatre’s 2027 season anbd bookings, visit malthousetheatre.com.au