A critic’s view on Melbourne theatre in 2024
By Cameron Woodhead
Gone are the days when foyer gossips would mutter ruefully about the Melbourne Theatre Company. Leadership change under Anne-Louise Sarks has steered the company into a position of creative strength.
Of all the good news stories in theatre in 2024, it is the runaway success of the MTC’s season – with bold programming full of confident and appealing new Australian works, galvanised by the sense of an artistic community pushing to new heights – that stands out most.
Kala Gare stars as Sybylla Melvyn in the MTC’s inspired musical adaptation of My Brilliant Career.Credit: Pia Johnson
As artistic director, Sarks has raised the bar. It isn’t simply the slew of five-star reviews the MTC has garnered from The Age this year, it’s that the production standard has been so reliable while continuing to be shaped by a generous and engaged vision of what the company can achieve.
And what can’t it achieve after 2024? It delivered three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays on the trot, including the mesmerising Topdog/Underdog directed by Bert Labonte. It delivered joyous new Australian works that will endure – from Nathan Maynard’s 37 (such a classic hymn to the unifying power of footy it scored a return season in January) to the propulsive feminist fun of a musical based on Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career.
Sarks’ energy and creative intelligence are palpable, and the desire to bring quality theatre to the broadest audience is backed by a canny and flexible approach – whether staging plays in the intimate but underutilised Lawler Studio or letting Ilbijerri Theatre Company take the lead for Blak in the Room, an inspiring collaboration showcasing emerging First Nations artists. I have no qualms recommending an MTC subscription for 2025.
It’s a different story at the Malthouse. Our second-largest subsidised theatre seems to be running out of puff. With a planned adaptation of Michel Faber’s creepy novel Under the Skin quietly shelved recently, the theatre has been – very unusually – dark since August to regular programming, save for the entertaining festive variety show F Christmas.
Only a cast of genuine triple threats could pull Six off, and they succeeded with exuberance.Credit: James D Morgan / Getty Images
I don’t think anyone wants a return to its Playbox days, where the theatre focused exclusively on new Australian drama. However, the Malthouse does need to program in a way that feels like a holistic response to a changing arts scene.
Artistic director and co-chief executive Matt Lutton’s specific interests – notably queer and immersive styles of theatre-making, and inventively designed stage adaptations of arthouse films – risk ossifying into faddishness if they dominate for too long, despite attracting younger and more adventurous audiences.
Musical theatre in 2024 offered plenty to see, as always, even if the dance card at some theatre venues was cramped as Arts Centre Melbourne entered major renovations. A few anticipated shows were anticlimactic – fair enough (even thematic) for the Groundhog Day musical, arguably less fair with something like Sarah Brightman’s awkward return to the stage in Sunset Boulevard.
Highlights abounded, too: Ruva Ngwenya’s stunning incarnation of rock legend Tina Turner in the Tina musical, the wives of Henry VIII reimagined as sassy pop stars in SIX, and Kala Gare as Sybylla Melvyn, heading up My Brilliant Career at the MTC in a production that it would be criminal not to tour.
Maverick Newman and Gabbi Bolt are the perfect pairing in Murder for Two.Credit: Mark Gambino
Other personal favourites included the hilarious musical murder mystery from Hayes Theatre Company, Murder for Two, and Christie Whelan Browne’s autobiographical cabaret Life in Plastic.
On the indie theatre scene, all the talk is of La Mama closing public performances in 2025. In a radically underfunded sector, the company, in its mission to nurture indie artists across the communities that depend on it, is taking steps to restructure and secure its future operations. Whether temporary closure is the right strategy remains to be seen, but La Mama will be missed.
Although it is still producing terrific new work – witness Olivia Satchell’s Ball Kids at the Fringe – La Mama’s imminent closure rather obscures creativity elsewhere.
The quality and consistency of the theatre at Red Stitch is worth remarking on, as is Cameron Lukey’s programming at fortyfivedownstairs (which brought us The Inheritance, Hamlet, The Hall and other highlights), as is the rejuvenation of Theatre Works into an indie workhorse under Dianne Toulson.
Indie theatre-makers need all the support they can get. They’re facing an environment in which government funding for individual artists has fallen away, sometimes to a staggering degree, over the past decade.
It’s some sign of how precarious individual artists are finding things that so many established talents chose to stage shows under the umbrella of the 2024 Fringe Festival. That trend looks set to continue, and Melbourne audiences will be able to enjoy another festival that got around to finding its feet this year, Rising, in June 2025 – a welcome certainty in unsettled times.
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