At a time when Australia’s live performance sector is still working to rebuild audiences and momentum, there’s something exciting about a leading theatre company putting a brand new work from one of our hottest theatrical exports at the centre of its program.
Malthouse Theatre’s 2027 season is giving us just that with The Tartuffe, a new comedic play from Eddie Perfect that takes Molière’s classic satire into the age of artificial intelligence – complete with an AI-powered hairdressing robot.
It is also the first full season programmed by Dean Bryant since he took the reins as Malthouse’s artistic director and co-CEO, with eight productions spanning comedy, drama, horror, cabaret and reworkings of classic texts.
Seven are world premieres, and all are by Australian creators – including brand new offerings from Yve Blake, Thomas Weatherall and Bloomshed, a collaboration from Joanna Murray-Smith and Sarah Goodes, and more.
Malthouse Theatre’s 2027 season – quick links
From Beetlejuice to Molière
Perfect has become one of Australia’s most recognisable musical theatre creators, with his work on Beetlejuice! The Musical helping to turn it into a break-out Broadway hit before he returned to Australia to step into the titular role for the Australian transfer, which garnered a lot of fanfare despite the tour’s premature death (another victim of the commercial sector’s live performance crisis).
But for The Tartuffe, he is returning to his Melbourne roots.
Perfect began his career at the Malthouse more than two decades ago as an actor, performing early cabaret and comedy work there. Bryant later collaborated with him on Candide for Opera Australia and Victorian Opera, drawn to their shared interest in combining the Australian vernacular with heightened theatricality.
When Bryant suggested they turn their attention to Molière’s Tartuffe, Perfect came back with a decidedly contemporary spin on the original story, which centres on a wealthy man named Orgon who becomes infatuated with a hypocritical conman posing as some kind of divine authority.
‘He said, “So how about instead of a wealthy guy inviting a religious figure into the household … we make it an AI-powered robot who’s invited into the household, manipulates everyone by telling them what they want to hear, and takes over?”‘ Bryant tells ArtsHub.
The result puts Orgon into an existential crisis as his family grapples with a machine designed to give them exactly what they want to hear – and asks what we are actually doing when we hand everything over to AI.
Bryant directs the new comedy, with Perfect reuniting onstage with Beetlejuice! co-star Karis Oka (Australia’s Lydia Deetz), along with rising comedy star Noah Szto and a cast of clowns.
For Bryant, Oka was an immediate fit for the production: ‘I’ve been longing to work with [Karis] forever, but also they have that incredible sensibility in comedy that is sharp and high status, but also very emotionally engaging.’
Bryant’s Malthouse era begins
The Tartuffe is one of eight productions that mark the first program assembled under Bryant’s tenure as Malthouse Theatre’s artistic director. A multi-award-winning director and writer, Bryant assumes the position off the back of four years as an associate director at Melbourne Theatre Company, during which time he developed the critically-adored musical adaptation of My Brilliant Career. (Bryant penned the book and lyrics in collaboration with Sheridan Harbridge, with musical direction by Victoria Falconer of the Hayes Theatre Co.)
He tells ArtsHub that his programming mission was, in part, to capture what he sees as distinctive about Malthouse: its capacity for work with an ‘electrical charge’, and its history of making ambitious, alternative theatre at a professional scale.
‘Malthouse gets to be the naughty company in Melbourne,’ Bryant says.
‘We’re not a state company, [and] we’re not run by a university. We came out of a very provocative beginning where Carillo Gantner and his team, 50 years ago decided that Melbourne audiences needed an alternative – actually alternative theatre, but done on a pro scale.’
That spirit runs through the 2027 program, which also includes the Melbourne debut of swim by Mununjali poet Ellen van Neerven. First staged by Griffin Theatre Company at Sydney’s Carriageworks, this visually immersive two-hander follows a genderfluid protagonist as they navigate a sizzling summer’s day at the public pool.
Legendary actors Lisa McCune and Catherine McClements will star in a new adaptation of Charlotte Wood’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Stone Yard Devotional, the story of a woman who detaches herself from her life and finds herself among a group of cloistered nuns. Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and director Sarah Goodes reunite for this one after their work on critically-acclaimed productions Julia, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Switzerland.
The Malthouse stage will be transformed into an elevated karaoke night with MAGIC SING: Pinoy Pop Power! , a distinctly Filipino celebration of power ballads and pop culture as a vehicle for exploring politics and diaspora. Christina O’Neill (All About Eve, My Brilliant Career) leads a trio of Filipino-Australian divas, directed and choreographed by Yvette Lee in an experience created by cabaret goddess extraordinaire Victoria Falconer (HOUSE OF ROT, My Brilliant Career) and Bryant.
There is also gothic horror in store with the world premiere of a new one-person adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Keziah Warner (Hour of the Wolf, Nosferatu) starring Tuuli Narkle (NCIS: Sydney, Mystery Road: Origin). Inspired by Henry James’ classic novella, the story follows a young governess who flees from Australia and arrives at an isolated country estate to care for two children, only for things to take a turn from Downton Abbey to the The Shining as she becomes convinced that the house is haunted by sinister figures from its past.
Bryant will also direct a brand new play from Yve Blake (Fangirls, Mackenzie). Jackpot promises to ‘take the most illegal thoughts you’ve ever had about your family and scream them out loud’, putting two sisters into a pressure cooker as they confront questions of family obligation, ageing and wealth.
Another one to watch, Heartbreak High star Thomas Weatherall writes and stars in Lucy. A story about ‘falling in love and what happens when people change’. Follows his critically-acclaimed debut play, Blue, Weatherall’s first Melbourne stage work will be directed by Bryant.
And off the back of their riotous twists on Pride and Prejudice and Animal Farm, Melbourne’s indie theatre rebels Bloomshed return to Malthouse with the world premiere of Gone With The Wind – an unflinching adaptation of
Margaret Mitchell’s classic that holds a mirror to the Australian mythos.
Beyond the mainstage, Malthouse’s 2027 program will also welcome the return of the Malthouse Comedy program as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, alongside a tenth-anniversary edition of YIRRAMBOI, celebrating First Peoples’ culture, Country and storytelling.
Theatre that gives audiences something they can’t get elsewhere
Across the season, Bryant sees a recurring question arise: what does it mean to be human?
It appears in very different forms – through our relationship with technology in The Tartuffe, through family and obligation in Jackpot, through the struggling relationship at the heart of Lucy, and through questions of faith and meaning in Stone Yard Devotional.
But the other connective tissue of the season is theatrical ambition.
Bryant wants audiences to come to Malthouse and say: “I don’t think I could see this kind of thing anywhere else.”
That sense of distinction is particularly important at a moment when theatre has more competition for audiences’ time and attention than ever before.
‘We’re trying to give people stories that they can’t get anywhere else, that are satisfying, that they trust us to tell,’ says Bryant.
For a company with a reputation for pushing at the edges of Australian theatre, Bryant’s first season makes that ambition explicit:. It’s a program built around the idea that theatre can still surprise its audience.
