Sydney’s stages are set for a strong June. From a one-woman gothic horror at Belvoir St Theatre to Suzy Eddie Izzard’s solo Hamlet at the Sydney Opera House, and from a sexed-up Vatican tragedy at KXT to a Bangarra triple-bill, the city’s mainstages and independent venues will all be firing in different directions at once.
The Vivid Sydney festival is also running 22 May to 13 June. But despite press releases spruiking Vivid’s ‘expansion into theatre and dance’, it has no conventional theatre or dance productions to speak of.
This year’s Vivid is structured around four ideas – light, music, minds and food – spanning light shows, art installations, talks and cuisine. The closest it gets to theatre is an immersive light and sound experience for children and a circus show. Still, the festival adds enormously to Sydney’s creative offerings and is well worth exploring.
As for dedicated, staged theatrical productions, here are five shows worth booking before they sell out.
Sydney theatre guide June 2026 – quick links
Cadaver Synod
In 897 AD, Pope Stephen VI had the rotting corpse of Pope Formosus, who had died nine months earlier, exhumed, dressed in papal robes, propped up on a throne and put on trial. The trial went ahead. The corpse, predictably, lost. This is the historical event that gives Ruby Blinkhorn’s new Australian play its title – staged as part of the Festival of New Writers, New Works, a partnership between KXT and NIDA’s Master of Fine Arts Dramatic Writing program. It’s billed as ‘a sexed-up Vatican tragedy that’s also funny… Amen!’ Alongside the curiosity factor, this will be worth catching because KXT is one of the few Sydney venues consistently programming new local writing at this scale.
Cadaver Synod is at KXT on Broadway, Ultimo from 27 May to 6 June.
Continuity
American playwright Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds and recent Broadway hit Liberation) wrote Continuity as ‘a play in six takes’ – a film-within-a-play set on the chaotic shoot of a Hollywood eco-thriller, where a frazzled crew battles the clock to nail their final shot as both the movie and the planet teeter on the brink. The Sydney production, directed by Sahn Millington, is part of New Theatre’s adventurous 2026 season. The premise is sharp, setting climate change as both subject and ironic backdrop, with Hollywood’s attempts to dramatise the crisis revealed as its own form of carbon-belching absurdity.
While technically an amateur theatre company, the New’s dedication to quality is such that its offerings are frequently in the wheelhouse of professional theatre. If its recent track record is anything to go by, Continuity will repeat this feat.
Continuity is at the New Theatre, Newtown from 26 May to 20 June.
Sheltering
Bangarra Dance Theatre arrives at the Opera House with a triple bill timed almost perfectly. In July, the company will become the first Australian dance company – and the first First Nations performers anywhere – to receive the prestigious Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale Danza.
Sheltering brings together three works exploring intergenerational First Nations storytelling: Glory Tuohy-Daniell’s Keeping Grounded; the dance film Brown Boys by Daniel Mateo and Cass Mortimer Eipper; and Frances Rings’ Sheoak, with haunting music by the late David Page.
Rings, Bangarra’s artistic director, frames the program as a meditation on shelter being something sacred and transformative – a haven ‘of protection, connection and the sharing of stories across generations’.
Sheltering is at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House from 3 to 13 June.
Izzard: The Tragedy of Hamlet
Suzy Eddie Izzard, performing all 23 characters in Hamlet on a bare stage. It’s adapted by her brother Mark Izzard, directed by Selina Cadell and arrives in Sydney after triple-extended runs in New York, Chicago and London. Judi Dench called it ‘spectacular’.
This is Izzard’s second one-person classic adaptation, following her acclaimed solo Great Expectations (also adapted by Mark Izzard and directed by Selina Cadell) and represents a serious artistic commitment from a performer better known to Australian audiences for stand-up and screen work.
The bare stage approach honours the original Globe conditions: it’s Shakespeare’s text, Izzard’s craft and almost nothing else. If you’ve ever wanted to see Hamlet, Ophelia and Polonius played by the same person within the space of a few minutes, here’s your chance.
Izzard: The Tragedy of Hamlet is at the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House from 9 to 21 June.
The Roommate
The Australian premiere of Jen Silverman’s dark comedy The Roommate is directed by Lee Lewis and stars Lucy Bell and Belinda Bromilow. The setup is deceptively simple: Sharon, a recently divorced Iowa homebody who’s never broken a rule in her life, takes in Robyn, a mysterious fast-talking New Yorker who’s broken most of them. Polite small talk soon gives way to deep secrets, surprises and a friendship that challenges everything both women thought they knew about themselves.
Silverman, whose work has been staged at Steppenwolf, Yale Rep and on Broadway, writes razor-sharp, compassionate two-handers. The Ensemble does this kind of intimate, character-driven work better than most and the pairing of Bell, with her Bell Shakespeare and Sydney Theatre Company pedigree, and Bromilow (The Great, Doctor Doctor) promises serious chemistry.
The Roommate is at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli from 19 June to 25 July.
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