Ensemble Theatre – quick links
Ensemble Theatre, located in Sydney’s northern harbour-side suburb, Kirribilli, has launched its 2026 subscription season.
Ten plays – including the world premiere of Ensemble stalwart David Williamson AO’s new satire, The Social Ladder – have been programmed for subscribers, as well as a ‘special event’: another world premiere, this time by British-born Australian actor Daniel Mitchell.
In August, audiences can see Mitchell (who has a decades-long association with the company, having acted in the 1998 production of Two by British playwright Jim Cartwright, and many Ensemble productions subsequently), performing his new one-man show, The Shadow of Fame, about growing up as the son of household name Warren Mitchell, aka long-running TV sitcom Till Death Us Do Part’s working class racist, Alf Garnett.
Ensemble Artistic Director, Mark Kilmurry,said the 2026 season, ‘celebrates everything I love about live theatre – fresh contemporary voices and timeless classics that continue to captivate’.
He continued: ‘This year is a special one for me – it marks 10 years as Ensemble Theatre’s Artistic Director and 20 years since I was appointed Associate Director. It’s been an incredible journey working alongside some of the finest creatives and actors in the country.’
Under Kilmurry’s artistic direction, Ensemble has commissioned 25 new Australian plays in the last decade, and also launched initiatives for young artists, such as the Ensemble Theatre Sandra Bates Director’s Award (named after Kilmurry’s predecessor, Sandra Bates, who was Ensemble’s Artistic Director for 30 years, from 1986 to 2016).
Ensemble Theatre is notable for not relying on Create NSW or Creative Australia funding for its core operations (though it does receive touring funding for its productions, including the 2025 tour of Melanie Tait’s The Queen’s Nanny to Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and regional NSW). Instead, the company relies on subscriptions and the box office appeal of its programming to generate its operating revenue.
Ensemble Theatre’s 2026 season: David Williamson
As previously noted, Ensemble has programmed 10 plays in its 2026 season, starting the year with Williamson’s The Social Ladder on 23 January. Described as a dissection of ‘the fragile performance of status – and the outrageous lengths we’ll go to just to be seen,’ the production is directed by Janine Watson and includes actors Mandy Bishop, Sarah Chadwick and Andrew McFarlane in its cast of six.
A second Williamson play, 1989’s Top Silk, ‘the story of a family whose public lives lead to the destruction of their private lives’, according to a 1989 article in The Canberra Times, runs from 31 July – 12 September and will be directed by Kilmurry himself.
Ensemble Theatre: new Australian works and Australian premieres
Other new Australian works programmed for 2025 include the new comedy The Elevator by Eloise Snape (whose ‘intricately structured, in a non-linear fashion’ Pony at Griffin in 2023, elicited ‘substantial intrigue and fascination,’ according to critic Suzy Wrong); The Year in Tatters – A Revue, a satirical look at the year to date premiering on 24 October and featuring Andrew Hansen (The Chaser), Mark Humphries (7.30), Chris Taylor (The Chaser) and Christie Whelan Browne (Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell); and rounding out the year, the world premiere of Kilmurry and Jamie Oxenbould’s latest comedy, Midnight Murder on the Christmas Cruise of Death, playing from 27 November – 10 January 2027.
Ensemble Theatre: Bette & Joan
Ensemble’s 2026 season also includes the Australian premieres of UK playwright Anton Burge’s 2011 play Bette & Joan, about the rivalry between aging Hollywood stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (of which The Guardian noted, ‘Burge’s script never digs far beneath the surface: it is little more than a rehash of old Hollywood gossip, buying unquestioningly into the idea that strong, successful women are all bitches at heart. Still, bitching can be delicious when done with style.’), and US playwright Jen Silverman’s 2015 dark comedy, The Roommate, directed by Lee Lewis.
Read: The secret diary of an Australian arts freelancer, aged 46¾
The season also features a new production of James Roose-Evans’ adaptation of Helene Haff’s memoir, 84 Charing Cross Road (about a lifelong friendship generated in letters between a New York writer and a London bookdealer), co-directed by Kilmurry and Julia Robertson and starring Kilmurry and two-time Gold Logie winner Georgie Parker; a revival of Mary Rachel Brown’s biting black comedy about the cut-throat world of greyhound racing, The Dapto Chaser (a Merrigong Theatre Company commission, which originally premiered in Wollongong in 2011), directed by Anna Houston; and the Christmas-set Snowflake by British playwright Mike Bartlett (Cock, Chariots of Fire, King Charles III), a play about generational conflict, fathers and daughters, and whether we’re living in the best or worst of times.
Subscriptions for Ensemble’s 2026 season are now on sale.
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