Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre will be celebrating its silver jubilee in 2026. That may be a couple of years away, but the beloved St Kilda-based ensemble company is getting in the mood of looking back in order to look forward with its first production for the 2025 season.
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2025 season’s line-up
Introducing the season at a launch this week (Wednesday 20 November) Artistic Director Ella Caldwell, announced the return of company board member Joanna Murray-Smith’s 1995 play Honour, first performed at the Malthouse (then Playbox) in November 1995.
Honour
Addressing the playwright who was in attendance at the launch, Caldwell said, “You’re an astonishing writer Jo, and I am very proud that we will be producing the 30th anniversary season of this superb and biting, electric play with four terrific roles for actors that I just can’t wait to see in our little space.”
The new production will be directed by Sam Strong and feature Peter Houghton and Caroline Lee in the lead roles of George and Honor (without the ‘u’), with the two actors on hand at the launch to offer a sneak peek of the repartee and spark audiences can expect when the show opens next February.
Caldwell was keen to stress that Honour will be something of an exception, however, with a raft of new plays also in the line-up, including two from local writers.
What’s Yours
Kezia Warner’s contribution to the season will be What’s Yours. Written for ensemble member Christina O’Neill and opening in July, it’s a chamber piece dissecting the thorny topic of IVF and egg donation. Warner will be following up her 2019 Red Stitch offering Control (which picked up a four-and-a-half star review from ArtsHub) and her more recent work for Malthouse, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which also received four-and-a-half stars from ArtsHub’s reviewer Christine Davey, who described it as “a delightful, funny and grotesque (in the most glorious sense of the word) pastiche of colour, movement, text and imagery”.
Super
The other production by a local writer will be the world premiere of Super by the multitalented Emilie Collyer, again featuring ensemble member and Melbourne theatrical stalwart Caroline Lee, along with Laila Thaker. From the grounded realism of infertility explored in What’s Yours, Collyer’s fantastical play looks at the friendship between two young women with super powers, and what happens to them and their relationship when a celebrity enters the mix. Described by Caldwell as a “very, very funny, very poignant and very inventive story”, Super will be directed by Emma Valente and open in June.
The Comeuppance
Another play receiving its Australian debut is two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance, which premiered in Washington DC’s Signature Theatre in 2023. Gary Abrahams follows his successful time helming Iphigenia in Splott by returning to the director’s chair to bring to the stage this tale of a group of friends gathering for their 20th high school reunion. Red Stitch’s production will open in late April.
Job
Rounding out the season will be Max Friedlich’s psychological thriller, Job, produced in Melbourne after starting life off-Broadway in New York last year and receiving a Broadway transfer that enjoyed positive reviews and an extended run that finished last month.
Red Stitch’s production will star rising talent Jessica Clarke, fresh from a triumphant turn in the one-woman show Iphigenia in Splott in September. A two-hander, Job will be directed by Melbourne veteran Nadia Tass, the filmmaker behind such feature films as Malcolm, The Big Steal and Amy, as well as a string of theatrical ventures for companies such as Melbourne Theatre Company, Ensemble Theatre, Griffin and Signature Theatre in the US.
Touring shows
After the huge success of one of the company’s recent productions, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which transferred to the Comedy Theatre and has now been announced as part of Sydney Theatre Company’s 2025 season, Red Stitch is determined to keep growing and branching out. Noting the challenging times faced by many other small to medium companies in the current landscape, with organisations like La Mama pausing productions for 2025, the St Kilda-based outfit is building on its success.
Caldwell also announced a national tour of Emily Sheehan’s Monument will roll out. The play, which ArtsHub‘s Kate Mulqueen described as “a clever and highly entertaining comedy about class, power, societal and intergenerational inequalities, women, women’s relationships, truth and lies” was the sixth work developed through the company’s INK writers’ program, and later next year it will travel to Tasmania, regional NSW, regional Victoria and Western Australia.
Tickets for 2025 are now on sale, for more details about the entire season and to book.
