From a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and Shakespearean romantic comedy to homegrown satire set in Melbourne and futuristic sci-fi that explores what’s next for society, there are different worlds and stories to watch unfold during Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC)’s 2025 season.

MTC has revealed its 13 productions for next year, with a mix of laugh-out-loud comedy, sobering social satire, thrilling mysteries, beloved classics and more.

One of this year’s highlights returns in 2025 – Nathan Maynard’s 37, an Australian sports comedy that brings the energy, cheek, community, mateship and competitive edge of footy to the stage. It’s joined on the line-up by other Aussie originals, like David Williamson’s 1971 classic The Removalists; the black comedy is set in Melbourne and, under the direction of MTC artistic director and co-CEO Anne-Louise Sarks, unflinchingly examines authority and violence. Another play with a familiar setting, Andrea James’s The Black Woman of Gippsland is a powerful, poetic story that explores Victoria’s dark past, bringing forgotten and silenced stories of First Nations people centrestage. And the late author Cory Taylor’s powerful Dying: A Memoir, which chronicles her life after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, has been turned into a stage play by Benjamin Law as one of MTC’s Next Stage commissions.

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Other Australian productions include western Sydney playwright S Shakthidharan’s rich and poignant The Wrong Gods; Destiny, a family story set in apartheid South Africa in the ’70s, written by Kirsty Marillier alongside Barry Conrad (another commission through MTC’s Next Stage program); cheeky sci-fi comedy The Robot Dog from Hong Kong-born artist Roshelle Yee Pui Fong and Luritja writer and technologist Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan, which explores AI and the ethical dilemmas that will shape our future; and Legends (of the Golden Arches), a collaboration between Asian Australian theatre artists Merlynn Tong and Joe Paradise Lui – a funny and philosophical production that looks at the enduring power of friendship amid diaspora.

International titles are on the cards, too. Fresh from its UK premiere, Never Have I Ever by The Guilty Feminist podcast host Deborah Francis-White has been billed as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the modern era, while Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions comes direct from Broadways; both heartbreaking and heartwarming, it follows a hard-headed matriarch as she tries to guide the direction of her children’s lives.

Tony Award-winning musical Kimberly Akimbo, about a teenager whose body ages faster than normal, is a celebration of the joys of living, and the MTC production’s cast includes Casey Donovan, Marina Prior and Christie Whelan Browne. And two classic titles are also being staged: Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing and a stage adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance novel, Rebecca.

The announcement comes after a string of successful shows in MTC’s 2024 season, including the first run of 37, a sold-out season of Julia, a reimagining of A Streetcar Named Desire and English, already extended twice.

Subscriptions for 2025 are now on sale.

mtc.com.au