Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Mitchell Butel has unveiled his second season for the company – 13 productions in 2027 including four world premieres, six Australian premieres and a return for some of Australia’s most recognisable performers.

Sydney Theatre Company. Photo © Brett Boardman

The season will open and close at Roslyn Packer Theatre with two very different international productions: Robert Icke’s contemporary adaptation of Oedipus, starring Richard Roxburgh and Heather Mitchell, and the Old Vic production of A Christmas Carol, with Tim Minchin as Scrooge.

Alongside the international works, the season has a strong Australian focus, including new plays by Melanie Tait and 2026 Patrick White Playwrights Award winner Disapol Savetsila, and stage adaptations of Jenny Hocking’s The Palace Letters and Pip Williams’ The Bookbinder of Jericho, adapted by Verity Laughton as a sequel to The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Butel said the idea of family and community had emerged as a recurring concern across the season, although he had not set out to program around a particular theme.

“I didn’t design a theme. I don’t think for me that’s the way to program a season,” he said during a pre-launch media briefing.

“What’s emerged with this season … is in many ways a kind of exploration of family and community and what that is, how families are made, how families can be chosen, how they rupture, how they can damage us very deeply, but also how they can heal us or provide a kind of pathway to self-actualisation.”

Oedipus: Richard Roxburgh and Heather Mitchell. Photo © Holly Ward/Sydney Theatre Company

The season begins with Oedipus, running from 27 January to 28 February. Icke’s production relocates Sophocles’ tragedy to the world of contemporary politics, with Oedipus campaigning for election victory while his wife Jocasta gathers family and friends on election night.

Roxburgh and Mitchell will perform together on the STC stage for the first time in over 25 years – since they featured in a 1990 production of Lanford Wilson’s drama Burn This. Veteran stage stars John Gaden and Maggie Dence are also among the cast, as is blind actor Samuel Brewer, who has performed in the production in Athens, New York and London, playing the prophet Tiresias.

The production will also appear for a short season in the 2027 Adelaide Festival.

The first production at the Wharf 1 Theatre will be Logan St, written and directed by Jacob Boehme and transferring from State Theatre Company South Australia, where Butel was previously artistic director. Running from 5 February to 7 March, the play explores the friendship between Dulcie, a First Nations woman, and Goolie, an Afghan cameleer, in Adelaide in the 1940s.

Boehme draws on his own family history and the history of Adelaide’s Muslim and First Nations communities. The production also reaches back to the 19th century, incorporating the story of Kaurna women abducted by British sealers and taken to Kangaroo Island.

Next comes Becky Shaw, Gina Gionfriddo’s dark comedy of romantic entanglement and class, directed by Butel. Andrea Demetriades stars as Suzanna, alongside Lincoln Younes and Tom Dawson, in the Australian premiere of a play recently revived on Broadway.

The Palace Letters: Georgie Parker. Photo © Holly Ward/Sydney Theatre Company

The Drama Theatre will then host the first play Butel has commissioned as STC artistic director: The Palace Letters, written by Melanie Tait from Jenny Hocking’s book. Georgie Parker plays Hocking, with Jonathan Biggins (who has form playing a former Labor Prime Minister) as Gough Whitlam, in a production directed by Priscilla Jackman (RGB: Of Many, One).

The play follows Hocking’s legal campaign to gain access to correspondence between the Queen and Governor-General Sir John Kerr concerning the dismissal of Whitlam’s government in 1975. It moves between Hocking’s fight to access the documents and the events leading to the constitutional crisis.

Butel described Tait’s pitch for the play as “golden” and said it combined a political thriller with a story about an important episode in Australia’s history.

The Wharf 1 season continues with Amah and Nanna, the world premiere of Disapol Savetsila’s winning Patrick White Playwrights Award play. Annette Shun Wah and Lynne McGranger play two older women from very different backgrounds whose unlikely friendship develops after Nanna’s daughter cuts contact with her following a political rally.

The pair eventually embark on a road trip towards Uluru, with Savetsila using dark comedy to examine intolerance, migration and the weaponisation of grievance politics.

Savetsila’s previous play, Australian Graffiti, made him the youngest playwright to be programmed by STC when it premiered in 2017.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Death by Deckchair: Amber McMahon. Photo © Holly Ward/Sydney Theatre Company

A further world premiere arrives at Roslyn Packer Theatre in May with Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Death by Deckchair. Written by Deb Cox, co-creator of the original TV series with Fiona Eagger, the production takes Kerry Greenwood’s celebrated detective to sea.

Set in 1929, the story follows Phryne Fisher on a cruise to the South Seas where murder, jewel theft and romance collide. Amber McMahon stars as Fisher, with Daniel Evans directing the co-production between STC, Queensland Theatre and Jones Theatrical Group.

At the Wharf, Celeste Barber will make her STC debut in the Australian premiere of The Book of Liz, by Amy and David Sedaris, running from 29 May to 4 July. Barber plays Sister Elizabeth Donderstock, who flees an Amish-like religious community after being forced to surrender her famous cheese-ball recipe.

Butel will co-direct the production with Tait de Lorenzo, who was associate director on STC’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Picture of Dorian Gray: Nikki Shiels. Photo © Holly Ward/Sydney Theatre Company

Following Olivier and Tony Award-winning seasons in London and New York, Kip Williams’ adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray returns to its Sydney home from 30 June to 25 July. Nikki Shiels, who was Eryn Jean Norvill’s alternate in the original 2022 Sydney and Melbourne seasons, takes on all 26 characters in the production.

Another Australian premiere, David Ireland’s The Fifth Step, follows at the Wharf from 31 July to 19 September. Erik Thomson and Ashan Kumar play an older recovering alcoholic and the younger man he sponsors, in a two-hander that explores masculinity, authority, belief and the uneasy dynamics of mentorship.

Butel said the production becomes increasingly surreal as the relationship between the two men unravels.

The Drama Theatre’s final production of the year is John Proctor Is the Villain, Kimberly Belflower’s Broadway and West End hit directed by Melbourne Theatre Company artistic director Anne-Louise Sarks. The play places a group of American high school students studying Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in a contemporary setting, asking how a canonical work about sexual power and abuse is understood by young people today.

Butel said the play does not attempt to “cancel” Miller but instead examines how his work can be contextualised for contemporary audiences.

Vanya: Eryn Jean Norvill. Photo © Holly Ward/Sydney Theatre Company

From 16 October to 5 December, Eryn Jean Norvill returns to STC for Vanya, Simon Stephens’ solo adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, co-created by Stephens, Andrew Scott and Sam Yates. Norvill will play every character in the production, co-directed by Norvill and Marion Potts.

The season’s final world premiere is The Bookbinder of Jericho, adapted by Verity Laughton from Pip Williams’ novel and directed by Shannon Rush. The team behind The Dictionary of Lost Words reunites for the production, which follows working-class twins Peggy and Maude, bookbinders at Oxford University Press during the First World War.

The season closes with A Christmas Carol, running from 11 November to 26 December. The Old Vic production, written by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus, has previously won five Tony Awards. Tim Minchin takes on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in his first STC appearence since 20213’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.

Tickets for renewing subscribers go on sale on 15 September, with new subscriptions available from 29 September. For more information visit sydneytheatre.com.au