This year is shaping up as a corker for live theatre shows, with new Australian works and adaptations, a musical parody of an 1980s horror film (with splatter-zone), fresh takes on beloved literary classics, a whodunnit movie/board-game reworking and a cavalcade of toe-tapping, heart-swelling big budget musicals trucking into town. Here’s our pick of shows swinging into both Sydney and Melbourne.

My Brilliant Career
Adaptations of Miles Franklin’s 1901 debut novel are thick on the ground of late with playwright Kendall Feaver’s lauded production at Belvoir in 2000, the upcoming six-part Netflix drama series developed and co-written by Liz Doran (Barons, Prosper) and this acclaimed musical take first seen in 2024 at Melbourne Theatre Company. Happily, it returns, with Kala Gare back as feminist force of nature Sybylla Melvyn in director Anne-Louise Sark’s earthy, raucous and heart-swelling period production pumped with pop, folk, a little hip-hop and much cutting of rug. Adapted by Sheridan Harbridge (Prima Facie, Amplified), Dean Bryant (Dear Evan Hansen, Circle Mirror Transformation) and Mathew Frank (Once We Lived Here, Prodigal), this vies for the hottest ticket of the year.
Melb: Jan 23-Feb 28, Southbank Theatre; Syd: Mar 21-Apr 26, Roslyn Packer Theatre.

Pretty Woman – The Musical
You can’t keep an American romantic-comedy blockbuster down. A Broadway box office hit currently packing in Sydney crowds, its all-Australian cast sing and act their hearts out, revivifying plenty of the dialogue and moments made famous by Julia Roberts and Richard Gere (necklace box snapped closed, whoop-whoop at the races, creepy Philip) in the 1990 movie. The late Garry Marshall, who directed the film, co-wrote this musical’s book, but its biggest pull is seeing the knockout performances of Michelle Brasier as wisecracking Kit de Luca and Tim Omaji as the Beverley Wilshire hotel manager.
Syd: until April 5, Theatre Royal; Melb: from July, Regent Theatre

Cluedo
A comedy play inspired by the Hasbro whodunnit board-game you ask? Well, it worked for the 1985 cult classic movie Clue, which features enduringly loved performances by Tim Curry, Colleen Camp and Madeleine Kahn (“Flames. Flames on the side of my face”) and the 1990s British TV game show Cluedo, but less so the critically-panned 1997 off-Broadway musical Clue. This non-musical play, directly based on the film screenplay, stars Genevieve Lemon (Sister Act, Billy Elliot) as Mrs Peacock, Octavia Barron-Martin (The 39 Steps, Colin From Accounts) and Rachael Beck (Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret). Find out if it was Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick? Or Mrs Peacock in the kitchen with a wrench?
Melb: Feb 7-Mar 15, Comedy Theatre; Syd: Apr 11-May 8, Theatre Royal.

Evil Dead The Musical
Another classic movie adaptation, this time Sam Raimi’s 1983 horror film, is tweaked into a musical parody complete with flying limbs, faux-decapitation, songs riffing on blood and gore and a full cabin-in-the-woods set. Created by the producers of The Play That Goes Wrong (now also The TV Show That Goes Wrong), the show’s front three rows of seats are a guaranteed splatter zone of fake blood. Raincoats are available but, during its off-Broadway season, fans began deliberately wearing clean white T-shirts to get the full effect of generous geysers of sprayed stage blood.
Syd: Feb 20-Mar 21, Seymour Centre: Melb: Mar 26-Apr 12, Chapel Off Chapel.

Mackenzie
Playwright Yve Blake, the creator of beloved hit musical FANGIRLS (now in production as a TV series) is back with a new play (with songs) about a 13-year-old girl, with a ballistic stage mum, trying for fame on a TV talent show. A Bell Shakespeare production directed by Virginia Gay, it’s influenced by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and charts the ramifications and unravelling behind dreams to be the No.1 pop girl in the world.
Syd: June 6-July 18, Sydney Opera House; Melb: July 23-Aug 9, Arts Centre Melbourne.

Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)
Written and co-directed by one of the show’s performers, rising UK star Isobel McArthur, this wittily silly take on Jane Austen’s classic won the 2022 Olivier Award for best comedy. Five women play “below-stairs” Regency-era staff on a karaoke-style hen’s night – leading to fast-paced, quick-change portrayals of all of Austen’s characters singing suitable pop classics (Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain is spot-on for Elizabeth’s first meeting with Darcy). Satirical takes abound (Mr Bennet is simply an empty chair hung with an open newspaper, no barrier to Mrs Bennet talking to him incessantly), there’s fab dialogue, double-quick costume changes and a bevy of microphones hidden in props requiring the cast to sing into vases, cups and potted plants.
Melb: June 18-July 12, Atheneum Theatre; Syd: Jul 16-Aug 30, Sydney Opera House.

Steel Magnolias
Robert Harling’s story of six close-knit women in a small Louisiana town was a play before it was adapted for the hit 1989 film with its all-star cast of Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, and Julia Roberts. Written in 10 days, Harling wrote it to help him deal with the death of his sister and to help his nephew know more about his late mother. Directed by Lee Lewis, it’s a return to Truvy’s beauty salon and the way these resilient women face life’s big, small and seemingly insurmountable chapters.
Syd: May 13-31, Theatre Royal; Melb: Jul 23-Aug 9, Athenaeum Theatre.

Waitress
Based on the late Adrienne Shelley’s 1997 movie, this smash-hit Broadway show, with a score described by The New York Times as an “enduring wonder”, brings its southern diner, pie-expert waitress’s uplifting quest for a new life to Australia for the first time.
Melb: from May, Her Majesty’s Theatre; Syd: from August, Lyric Theatre.

Heathers: the Musical
Put on your best button-up blazer, knee-high socks and pleated tartan mini for a trip to Westerberg High, the dominion of cruel, cool-girl clique, the Heathers and our misfit teenage heroes, smart and insecure student Veronica Sawyer and charismatic nihilist JD. Not your typical teen comedy, Heathers’ pitch-black humour, story and script (“What’s your damage, Heather?“) exemplified ’80s counter-culture, a quality not lost in Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s musical version.
Melb: from April 8, Arts Centre Melbourne; Syd: August 26-29, Coliseum Theatre, Sept 1-19, Roslyn Packer Theatre.

Anastasia
Inspired by the enduring mystery of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the youngest of the Romanovs, and drawing on the 1997 animated film scored by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, Anastasia centres on Anya, an orphaned young woman with amnesia and a nagging sense that her past holds more than she knows. Moving from the last gasps of imperial Russia to the glittering escapism of 1920s Paris, it glides through revolution and romance, opulence and danger, with gilded palaces, political turmoil, a handsome ruffian, a ruthless villain and a resilient heroine.
Melb: until Feb 20, Regent Theatre; Syd: from April, Lyric Theatre

Six the Musical
A cultural phenomenon since debuting as a student production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017, this startlingly catchy take on the six wives of Henry VIII telling their own narratives as feminist pop stars with fierce beefs, is a sure bet. Expect to dance, punch the air and scream for Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr – plus a smoking live band – all unstoppable heroines for modern times.
Melb: from July, Comedy Theatre; Syd: from October, Theatre Royal