In 2027, Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) once again presents an iconic season of unmissable theatre: still All Feeling, but now at Full Volume.
From David Wenham on the frontline of every war ever fought to the stage debut of Australia’s most beloved sleuth Miss Fisher – alongside a cut-throat Sondheim classic, the most Tony Award nominated play in Broadway history, and the first and last chance to see the final production of a contemporary Australian classic – this is a landmark year for Queensland audiences.
QTC Artistic Director Daniel Evans’ second season stretches from the battlefields of Troy and an ancient world shaped by Country to murder on the high seas, a 1970s recording studio and Victorian London. The 2027 season presents a line-up of some of Australia’s most celebrated performers to Queensland stages, alongside local talents creating epic new works.
It also marks an increasingly ambitious national chapter for QTC, with partnerships spanning Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Jones Theatrical Group, Belvoir St Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse and JUTE Theatre Cairns. “These partnerships mean that we can present the kind of theatre we believe Queensland audiences deserve,” said Evans.
Evans said the 2027 season was built around a simple challenge: make every night at the theatre compelling. “Our test for this season became very simple: swing even bigger, punch harder and make theatre irrefutable,” said Evans.
Opening the season, award-winning Australian actor David Wenham makes his Queensland stage debut in An Iliad, reprising the extraordinary performance that earned a sold-out Sydney Theatre Company season and a string of five-star reviews.
Wenham the Poet, a compelling narrator to recount the Trojan War – and the legacy of violence in every war since – until humanity finally learns to overcome its appetite for violence, in an intimate and dynamic contemporary reimagining of Homer’s ancient epic.
Shakespeare’s most famous love story is then reimagined through First Nations ways of storytelling in the world premiere of Romeo + Juliet, adapted and directed by QTC Head of First Nations Theatre Isaac Drandic and Kamarra Bell-Wykes.
Featuring an extraordinary ensemble of local Blak performers and designers, the production blends Shakespeare’s text with Turrbal language, song, movement and traditional and contemporary First Nations storytelling to imagine an ancestral world where Country holds the memory of a people.
Australia’s most stylish private detective makes her stage debut next in the world premiere of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Death by Deckchair. Created by Deb Cox and Fiona Eagger, the team behind the internationally beloved television series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.
This brand-new murder mystery has been written especially for the stage – an entirely original adventure making its world premiere. The story reunites Phryne Fisher and Detective Inspector Jack Robinson for a glamorous cruise, along with the devoted Dot and a cast of colourful suspects, where a jewel robbery quickly spirals into something far more deadly.
The Australian premiere of Stereophonic then throws open the doors of a 1970s Californian recording studio in David Adjmi’s record-breaking, backstage fly-on-the-wall docu-drama which has taken the title as the most Tony Award-nominated play in Broadway history.
Directed by Evans with the personal endorsement of Adjmi and featuring original live music by Grammy Award winner Will Butler of Arcade Fire, the production set in a replica 1972 recording studio is an extraordinary glimpse into the cost of creative genius as it follows five musicians on the cusp of superstardom who spend a year trying to make the album that will define them and an entire generation, without destroying the band, their relationships or themselves.
One of the most celebrated Australian plays of recent years arrives on Queensland stages for the first time with S. Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking, directed by Eamon Flack. Spanning four generations and moving between Sri Lanka and Australia, this landmark epic brings 16 actors to the stage in a sweeping story of love, political strife, home, exile and the ties between parents and children.
Sondheim’s masterwork Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street transforms the Bille Brown Theatre into the grimy, gruesome world of Victorian London in an immersive new production directed by Daniel Evans and Bridget Boyle.
Serving up black comedy, gothic thrills and a generous helping of murder and meat pies in the eight-time Tony Award-winning musical, QTC favourite Naomi Price steps into the role she’s been dying to play as Mrs Lovett, while the titular role is played by Rockhampton-lad-turned-musical-theatre star Andy Conaghan in his QTC mainstage debut.
QPDA winner Alberto Di Troia takes audiences from Australia to rural Italy in My Roman Empire, a darkly comic political satire about family, identity and what happens when a young queer writer goes looking for his Italian roots and discovers his long-lost relatives are not the kind you want to uncover.
Di Troia, whose recent screen credits include Netflix’s The Survivors, turns a journey of ancestral discovery into a hilarious and heartfelt story of belonging, politics and the uncomfortable things you don’t want to find at the back of the family closet.
Rounding out the season, a team of Queensland’s best female theatre makers, including award-winning playwrights Maxine Mellor and Kathryn Marquet redefine some of literature’s most beloved sisters in the world premiere of a spirited new adaptation of Little Women.
Featuring an all-star cast of Queensland actors led by Matilda Award-winner Courtney Cavallaro, Louisa May Alcott’s story of the March sisters finds fresh fire on stage, celebrating sisterhood, ambition and four young women determined to decide for themselves what their lives might become.
For Evans, the enormous scope and scale of the season is precisely the point. “Our audiences are some of the best in the country – generous and daring – and this whole season is really conceived for them; whether it’s your first time in a theatre, or you’re a seasoned die-hard or you want your theatre served on the cutting edge.,” said Evans.
“Each play is event theatre. These are shows to mark in your calendar as appointment viewing. In 2027, we are not holding back. We are turning up the stakes. Turning up the scale. Turning up the feeling. This is a season filled with ambitious worlds, summoned by incredible artists, and populated with characters who are going to bring you to laughter, tears and the edge of your seat!” said Evans.
Season Tickets for Queensland Theatre Company’s 2027 Season are now on sale. For more information, visit: www.queenslandtheatre.com.au for details.
Images: Queensland Theatre Company’s 2027 Season (supplied) | David Wenham stars in An Iliad (supplied) | Romeo + Juliet (supplied) | Stereophonic (supplied) | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (supplied) | Little Women (supplied)