Limelight readers showed a distinct preference for classics of various kinds, ranging from Shakespeare to Alfred Hitchcock. But when a new play by a relatively unknown local playwright tops the most-read list … you know something’s afoot.

Naturism, Griffin Theatre Company. Photo © Brett Boardman

1. Naturism (Griffin Theatre Company)

Intergenerational friction and ecocide-era despair collided in Naturism, playwright Ang Collins’s mainstage debut – an 85-minute, bare-all comedy set on a remote bush block somewhere in Victoria. And yes, the cast was fully starkers. According to Limelight, “Naturism earns its most resonant truth: that nakedness, whether literal or moral, is never as simple as it seems.”

2. The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear & His Three Daughters (Belvoir)

Some theatre companies embrace the Silly Season. Belvoir went serious, ending its 2025 season with what is arguably the most chewy, gloomy and forbidding of the Bard’s tragedies. “Why pop corks when you can pop eyeballs?” asked Limelight‘s reviewer.

“Colin Friels gives us a peppery, far-from-decrepit Lear, a king stepping down at the height of his powers rather than sliding from them. He traces his character’s arc with precision and delicacy as Lear’s capriciousness turns into spite, wounded pride into destructive impulse, and bitterness softens – too late – into revelation.”

Will McDonald in The Talented Mr Ripley. Photo © Daniel Boud

3. The Talented Mr Ripley (Sydney Theatre Company)

The talent ran deep in a gripping adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic thriller. Only last year, Netflix released a serialised version in gorgeous black and white, with Andrew Scott closer to the amoral queer opportunist depicted in Highsmith’s novel. This version starred a much more youthful Will McDonald as the chameleonic Ripley, the shape-shifting fraudster gifted a passkey into a world of privilege he despises yet finds irresistible.

4. How to Plot a Hit in Two Days (Ensemble Theatre)

Spending a couple of hours in a TV writers’ room mightn’t sound like the most fun you could ever have, but Melanie Tait’s beautifully observed comedy about the killing off of a beloved soap opera character made you want to be there for every twist and turn.

Dannny Ball in The Glass Menagerie. Photo supplied

5. The Glass Menagerie (Ensemble Theatre)

It seems that the Ensemble Theatre crowd are among Limelight‘s most devoted readers. This Liesel Badorrek-directed production, with its sharp focus on design and lighting, and fine performances (from Danny Ball, Blazey Best and Ensemble debutante Bridie McKim) served Tennessee Williams’s 1944 ‘memory play’ very well.

6. Song of First Desire (Belvoir)

Andrew Bovell distilled a century of political violence and secrecy into the story of a Madrid family struggling with its demons. Directed by Neil Armfield, Song of First Desire took its audience back to the years of Franco’s ‘White Terror’ and the momentous events of 1968 – to explore a family’s past – one marked by violence, repression, sexual abuse and, above all perhaps, secrecy.

The 39 Steps. Photo © Cameron Grant

7. The 39 Steps (Neil Gooding Productions & Woodward Productions)

Patrick Barlow’s inventive riff on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film and the John Buchan novel that inspired it proved a popular read with Limelight’s audience (which may say something about our demographics).

8. And Then There Were None (John Frost/Crossroads Live)

Director Robyn Nevin delivered good old-fashioned British intrigue and murder with her second crack at an Agatha Christie play. “It might seem a bit creaky to some,” wrote Limelight reviewer Patricia Maunder, “but for those who enjoyed Nevin’s Mousetrap (or Gaslight, last year’s mid-20th century sinister British theatre revival) it’s jolly good entertainment.”

9. The Birds (Malthouse Theatre)

Made famous by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 melodrama (which she hated), The Birds delivers apocalyptic terror in a quietly devastating way; trading in the usual jump scares for a slow sense of dread, and monstrous creatures for your everyday seagull.

Nancye Hayes and Shiv Palekar in 4000 Miles. Photo © Daniel Boud

10. 4000 Miles (Sydney Theatre Company)

It was top-notch staging of Amy Herzog’s warm, wise and pithy play about two people from very different generations stuck in an uncertain present. Limelight favourite Nancye Hayes delighted as a 91-year-old grandmother living in a Greenwich Village apartment.