Some of Sydney’s best theatre has been unveiled for 2026. Here’s a taste

Stage adaptations of an Edwardian period romance, a tale of a mongrel dog thief, and a cult outback thriller headline the 2026 season of two of Sydney’s leading theatre companies in a year in which they have been thrown together as housemates.

Griffin Theatre Company and Belvoir St Theatre are children of Darlinghurst’s Nimrod Theatre – Griffin lives in The Stables, home of the Nimrod company which moved to bigger premises on Belvoir Street during the 1970s.

Now homeless while The Stables is rebuilt, Griffin is renting Belvoir’s downstairs theatre for 2026 after spending this year couch-surfing at Belvoir, Old Fitz, Seymour Centre and the Sydney Theatre Company.

“We did a show there [at Belvoir] this year, Michelle Lim Davidson’s Koreaboo, and it was great, it was wonderful, Griffin’s artistic director Declan Greene says. “I mean both our audiences got along. There weren’t any fistfights in the foyer. There was a lot of mutual curiosity from our audiences about what was happening.”

Upstairs Belvoir will present a line-up of nine productions comprising new Australian works, Indigenous stories, literary adaptations and classics. Downstairs Griffin is putting on five including three new Australian works. With the “reasonable” rent they charge Griffin, Belvoir will double their creative development budget for the year, a win-win for both companies.

Here are our picks for 2026:

A Room with a View (Belvoir):

Playwright Grace Chapple and director Hannah Goodwin love a good period romance. E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View was the book she carried with her while backpacking in Europe. She experienced the city of Florence through the eyes of the book’s central character Lucy Churchill – the breakthrough role for Helen Bonham Carter in the eponymous Ivory and Merchant 1985 film.

“The most striking thing about the book for me is E.M. Forster’s belief in personal relationships, that it’s only our connections with other people that can save us,” Goodwin says. “At the heart of the book are two people who connect, fall in love and help each other think and live on their own terms against the pressure of society, and right now, there appears to be an epidemic of loneliness in the world.”

Wake in Fright (Griffin):

This adaptation of Kenneth Cook’s cult novel played four performances at the Sydney Opera House before COVID shut it down. Greene says the plan is to recreate horror and intensity on stage, “almost like being on an amusement park ride”. “It should feel like the experience of school teacher John Grant in Bundanyabba, stranded, panicked and slowly menaced by this place,” he says.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (Belvoir):

Belvoir’s Eamon Flack waited years for the rights to become available to Olga Tokarczuk’s odd whodunit, first published in Polish in 2009. It follows an eccentric recluse Flack describes as a cross between Patrick White’s Miss Docker in A Cheery Soul and Agatha Christie’s Mrs Marple. She lives in a village on the Czech-Polish border where her neighbours have turned up dead. The play, says Flack, challenges the idea of “traditional structures that say that all human fates are decided by men in rooms”.

Mum Club (Griffin):

Budawang/Yuin woman Jorjia Gillis takes down the hyper-competitive world of the Inner West Mum Club peopled by the likes of corporate mum, anti-vax mum who burns sage at sleepovers and well-meaning mum who acknowledges Country every time she enters a new postcode. “It’s never actually said where it’s set, but it’s Marrickville, that’s absolutely the vibe,” Greene says. “It’s a study of young motherhood under pressure, particularly black motherhood, and it’s very, very, very funny.”

Runt (Belvoir):

Film and television actor John Leary, last seen on the Belvoir stage playing Jesus in The Book of Everything, has purchased the stage rights to Craig Silvey’s children’s novel of a stray dog made good. This will be a performance that crosses generations, the sweet spot for Belvoir, with a message about compassion, white lies and believing in yourself.

Look out for:

Belvoir’s Dear Son began with Thomas Mayo asking 12 Indigenous men to write a letter to their son or father of their hopes for the future in the aftermath of the failed referendum. Part concert, cabaret and biography,Amplified comes to Belvoir bringing the late Chrissy Amphlett to life as the frontwomen of The Divinyls. Vivian Pham’s coming of age novel The Coconut Children, receives its stage premiere at Belvoir. For the play’s 50th anniversary, Griffin is reviving The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin with actor Simon Burke as the Toorak voice teacher who fantasises about seducing Mick Jagger.

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