Malthouse’s 2025 Program Promises Laughs, Explosions, Horror and Never-To-Be-Repeated Performances

In 2025, Malthouse Theatre Company is offering a new first: early bird discounts for every single production next year, plus significantly lowered ticket prices in general.

First on the new season bill is the latest work by award-winning Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius (My Sister Jill, Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?) and her frequent collaborator, director Susie Dee. Truth is about Julian Assange. It covers his early life in Melbourne through Wikileaks and his later arrest. Five actors will take turns playing Assange and key figures like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

First Nations stories also get top billing with A Nighttime Travesty in February. It blends music, parody, zany costumes, explosions, vaudeville and existential horror in a production exploring romance and genocide.

In March and April 2025, Malthouse Comedy will feature local and international guests and projects exploring the intersection of comedy and theatre as part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The full line-up will be announced in December.

In May, Daphne du Maurier’s classic The Birds (the same story Alfred Hitchcock turned into a horror-thriller on screen) will be adapted for the stage starring Paula Arundell (The Bleeding Tree) in a one-woman show. Audiences can expect an eerie soundscape of flapping wings, falling feathers and swooping birds in an immersive – headphones-on – experience.

No two performances will be the same at one of Malthouse’s most ambitious plays: Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour and director Omar Elerian’s Echo: Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen. Each night a new performer – including well-known actors – take to the stage in a cold-read performance. Completely unrehearsed and unprepared, the actors encounter the script for the first time during the show itself.

Experimental Melbourne company Pony Cam’s first main stage commission, The Orchard, is based on Anton Chekhov’s final play, The Cherry Orchard. It comes to Malthouse in August.

Malthouse artistic director Matthew Lutton will direct a production of Troy, a reimagining of the classic Greek epic, with a script by Tom Wright (also known for adaptations of The Odyssey, Oedipus and Women of Troy).

The final production in the 2025 program is a different kind of cabaret show by performer Meow Meow. She reimagines Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes with direction from Kate Champion. With hairy fawns, singing swans and showgirl stars, this one is designed to be overwhelming in a good way.

Young audiences are also invited to think more critically about climate change in the latest iteration of The Suitcase Series, Malthouse’s participatory program for students in Year 9 and 10. New education commission Who No Kno Go Kno is directed by Effie Nkrumah. It’ll feature physical theatre, songs, puppetry, masks and percussion.

There’s still more to come, with announcements for shows in collaboration with Yirramboi arts festival, Rising festival and First Nations theatre company Iblijerri happening next year.

Tickets for the Malthouse Theatre 2025 season are on sale now.

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