Melbourne Theatre Company is giving Shakespeare’s most infamous villain a radically different kind of spotlight in 2027, with Kate Mulvany set to play every character in a new one-person adaptation of Richard III.
Richard III leads MTC’s 2027 season – quick links
An ambitious new solo act in the vein of Dorian Gray
Directed by rising theatre-maker Ian Michael, the production will see Mulvany – one of Australia’s most acclaimed actors and playwrights – undertake a virtuosic solo performance of Shakespeare’s history play, interrogating the different ways power is wielded by disabled and able-bodied people.
It’s a striking proposition in a season built around re-examining familiar stories. MTC’s 2027 program comprises 11 productions, including six world premieres, with six works supported through the company’s NEXT STAGE Writers’ Program and five MTC commissions.
For audiences who have watched the rise of director Kip Williams’ cine-theatre experiments with Sydney Theatre Company, there is also an intriguing point of connection. Michael served as assistant director to Williams on The Picture of Dorian Gray, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dracula, which make up Williams’ cine-theatre trilogy.
Williams’ The Picture of Dorian Gray – which is itself returning to STC in 2027 after dominating the West End and Broadway – famously has a single performer play all 26 characters, using live and pre-recorded video elements to transform the stage into a kind of cinematic playground.
MTC’s Richard III appears to take the multiple-character premise in a decidedly different direction. Here, the theatrical transformation rests squarely on Mulvany’s live performance, with the actor embodying the entire world of Shakespeare’s play.
The production also joins a broader appetite for Shakespearean reinvention, with Bell Shakespeare’s fresh 2027 season centring contemporary remixes of the Bard’s classics, including a national tour for Mackenzie, a Y2K-inspired pop-twist on Macbeth.
Kate Mulvany has unfinished business with Richard
This is also not Mulvany’s first encounter with Richard.
She played the title role in Bell Shakespeare’s 2017 production of Richard III, directed by Peter Evans. The performance was met with widespread critical acclaim, with Mulvany ultimately winning both the Helpmann Award and Sydney Theatre Award for Best Female Actor.
That production also saw Mulvany serve as dramaturg, with her portrayal exploring Richard’s physicality, misogyny and complicated relationship with power.
ArtsHub‘s own 4.5-star review praised ‘Mulvany’s expert turn as Richard’ adding that it is ‘Mulvany’s show through and through, and a thoroughly captivating one at that’.
Nearly a decade later, she will return to the character – but this time without a supporting cast. MTC describes the new adaptation as a darkly funny and heartbreaking theatrical feast, asking: ‘What if history’s greatest monster got to tell his own story, alone?’
The production also unites Mulvany with a director whose profile has been steadily growing to match her esteem in the Australian theatre landscape.
A proud Noongar man, Ian Michael is currently Resident Director at STC where he made his directorial debut with Constellations. He also directed Stolen and Picnic at Hanging Rock for STC, as well as Big Girls Don’t Cry for Belvoir St Theatre and Troy for Malthouse Theatre (which topped ArtsHub‘s list of Melbourne’s best theatre in 2025).
His direction of the break-out indie hit Sistren also earned him the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Direction of an Independent Production, with the co-production from Griffin Theatre Company and Green Door Theatre also putting debut playwright Iolanthe on the list of Australian playwrights you need to know.
Directing Richard III for MTC marks another step in Michael’s trajectory, placing him at the helm of an ambitious new Shakespeare adaptation and giving Mulvany a very different kind of solo challenge.
A season of big co-productions and new Australian work
Richard III is just one part of a season that continues MTC’s increasingly interconnected approach to Australian theatre-making.
Rachel Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters, Muriel’s Wedding) will return to MTC for the first time in 20 years, starring as the largely forgotten modernist painter Clarice Beckett in the world premiere of Clarice.
Inviting audiences to see the world – and Melbourne – through Beckett’s eyes, this new work was developed through a unique creative collaboration between Griffiths, AACTA Award-winning writer Trudy Hellier, and multi-award-winning director Simon Phillips. Opening in November, it will close MTC’s 2027 season.
More beloved stars of stage and screen will also be treading the boards in 2027, with Sigrid Thornton (Mother Play), Nadine Garner (The Doctor Blake Mysteries) and Erik Thomson (Packed to the Rafters) joining the cast of A Delicate Balance. This new production of Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy is directed by the award-winning Iain Sinclair (West Gate).
The year will open with the Australian premiere of Stereophonic in January. The most Tony Award-nominated play in Broadway history, it follows a band attempting to record the album that will define its generation. Previously announced as part of Belvoir’s bumper 2027 season, the production is directed by Daniel Evans (National Theatre Live: Our Generation) and co-produced with Queensland Theatre and Belvoir.
It joins other previously announced cross-company collaborations, including the highly-anticipated national tour of Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical. The bonkers runaway hit from Sydney’s Hayes Theatre Company won Best Production of a Musical at the 2025 Sydney Theatre Awards, and will arrive in Melbourne as part of its 2027 tour, directed by Sheridan Harbridge.
MTC will also present the Australian premiere of one of the most talked-about new plays in the world right now, Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain. As confirmed in Sydney Theatre Company’s 2027 season announcement, MTC Artistic Director Anne-Louise Sarks is leading the production.
An electrifying reframing of The Crucible from the point of view of the teenage girls at its margins, the Broadway hit has garnered seven Tony Award nominations, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and its already headed for the big screen with a feature film in development with Tina Fey and Sadie Sink attached.
Elsewhere the season includes a bold new adaptation of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds from award-winning Wirlomin Noongar writer Claire G Coleman (Terra Nullius). A co-commission with Sydney Opera House, it promises to turn the classic invasion story inside out.
MTC teams up with Belvoir again for Abbie-lee Lewis’ Dirty Diamonds – a First Nations road trip crime caper inspired by the real Argyle diamond mine heist – presented in association with Yirra Yaakin and RISING.
Jessica Arthur directs the world premiere of Julian Larnach’s Rebels, a world premiere inspired by a real meeting between Bob Hawke, Kerry Packer and Clive Lloyd.
In October, MTC will also premiere Every Second Wednesday, a major new work from celebrated writer Andrew Bovell (Lantana) and directed by Sarah Goodes (Julia, Break of Day), which is said to offer ‘a rare and deeply human portrait of the people usually left out from stories of addiction’.
In August, Zindzi Okenyo (Destiny, Is God Is) will direct the Australian premiere of The Authenticator by Winsome Pinnock – celebrated by The Guardian as ‘the godmother of Black British playwrights’. Direct from its premiere at London’s National Theatre, it’s a gripping, comedy-infused mystery-thriller about a family inheritance and the secrets buried inside it.
