The Highly Strung Players return to fortyfivedownstairs with two new works by award-winning author Peter Rose, who founded this troupe more than thirty years ago. As always, the comedy is sharp, mordant and absurdist. The Players will be joined by Julian McCarthy on percussion.

An original theatrical song cycle by composer/performer Joachim Coghlan (performed by Coghlan and Alexandra Aldrich) that gleefully explores the most wonderfully profound, eccentric, cheesy, and seemingly bizarre Christmas stories and traditions.

Do you dare join us to descend into James Joyce’s fevered dreamscape? When men fall under the spell of Circe, what can they become? Prepare yourself for a wild carnival ride of surreal hallucinations exploring the outer realms of gender identity and sexuality in Dublin 1904 – an over-the-top world of music, laughter… and vice. Gritty, moving, uproarious and outrageous: you may never be the same!

Step into the awe inspiring and intimate splendour of a 1600s candle-lit playhouse (with lighting design by Lisa Mibus) as acclaimed actor and theatremaker Alexandra Aldrich unveils the first iteration of her radical, female-centric reimagining of John Ford’s wildly controversial work, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore'. 

A razor sharp powerplay about the dark arts of marketing behind climate denial, this Melbourne premiere follows an acclaimed season in Canberra. Playwright Christopher Samuel Carroll performs opposite Damon Baudin, whose performance in 'Boys on the Verge of Tears' earned rave reviews earlier this year.

An affliction known as the RUMBLESKIN is stretching itself across the country. No one knows how it began, but everyone has a story about it. From director Alonso Pineda ('Nothing', fortyfivedownstairs) and playwright Ames May Nunn ('Our Monster's Name Is Jerry', Theatreworks), 'RUMBLESKIN' is a new queer folk tale exploring transformation in a strange and dangerous land.

In this audacious reimagining of Strindberg’s masterwork set on the eve of Greek Easter, the classic is torn from its 19th-century roots and reborn in the pressure-cooker of modern fine dining, where old hierarchies die hard and nothing stays simmering for long. Director Harry Haynes ('Cygnets', Theatreworks) will collaborate with renowned chef and Masterchef alum Conor Curran to bring the world of the play to life through taste, aroma, and atmosphere.

Following its acclaimed, award winning debut with 'Elegies; A Song Cycle' at fortyfivedownstairs in 2024, Clovelly Fox — one of Melbourne’s most exciting new theatre companies — returns with a fresh take on 'Ordinary Days', the contemporary musical by Adam Gwon. Directed by Green Room Award-winner Tyran Parke (who first brought this gem to life at Chapel Off Chapel), this production promises heart, humour, and a beautifully intimate theatrical experience.

In her bold and immersive style, renowned director Tanya Gerstle distils Shakespeare’s tragedy to its raw essence, working with a powerhouse ensemble (Christopher Kirby, Dushan Philips, Lucy Ansell, Matthew Furlani and Tanya Schneider) to deliver an intense, deeply human exploration of jealousy, power, and betrayal. With this production, Melbourne Shakespeare Company continues a stellar run at fortyfivedownstairs that includes 'Julius Caesar' in 2023 and 'Hamlet' in 2024. 

Melbourne’s multi-award-winning Lyric Opera returns to fortyfivedownstairs following the success of 'Fly' in 2019 to present the Australian premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s “dazzlingly original score”, hailed as a masterpiece of modern opera. “Commanding and captivating” mezzo-soprano Olivia Federow-Yemm performs the role Isabelle Eberhardt, supported by a cast of Melbourne’s most talented young singers and instrumentalists.

Created and performed by Emma Louise Pursey and directed by the incomparable Susie Dee, this powerful new solo work draws artist Joy Hester from the margins and places her centre stage. Two decades in the making, this deeply personal work blends arresting physicality with direct storytelling and multidisciplinary design to reclaim Hester’s legacy with passion, compassion, and life-affirming humour.

Directors Blake Barnard ('Dark Erotica Quartet') and Keith Brockett ('Footfalls') have assembled a stellar cast (Maude Davey, Cait Spiker, Shaun Goss, and Tim Wotherspoon) for this double bill. In 'Dark Erotica Quartet', three seemingly disparate scenes, structured like a concerto and featuring live music, celebrate the lost art of spoken erotica. And in 'Footfalls', Davey embodies the role of May, a woman bound by duty and lost in quiet anguish in Beckett's meditation on grief, devotion, and the frail borders between. 

Multi award-winner Iain Sinclair ('Hamlet', fortyfivedownstairs) directs John Logan's contemporary classic, featuring Dylan Smith ('The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power') as master abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Working with his assistant Ken (newcomer Jordan Briggs) following the biggest commission in the history of modern art, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. 'RED' is a searing portrait of an artist's ambition and vulnerability as he tries to create a definitive work. 

Playwright Brodie Murray ('The Whisper', fortyfivedownstairs) draws on stories handed down from his grandfather and father to tell a historical thriller that explores the contrasting relationships settlers and Blak peoples have with Country, ecology, leadership and spirituality. After sold out seasons at the Castlemaine State Festival and Yirramboi Festival in 2021, 'Soul Of Possum' returns under the direction of Beng Oh and Balla Neba (movement director). 

Fresh off multiple Green Room Award wins for 'Spring has Sprung or The Beautiful Show' and 'Twenty Million Thousand Leagues Under the Sea', and following the successes of 'The Owl in the Woods' and 'The Hertz Family Reunion', theatre renegades Pummel Squad are coming to fortyfivedownstairs with their third annual pantomime: a raucous celebration of death, hubris, and all we love about theatre.

In a regional town, grief holds a group of women together. Their bond is fragile – some close, others linked more by memory than friendship. When one of their own announces his transition, loyalties splinter, old wounds reopen, and the meaning of identity and belonging is fiercely contested. Midsumma Festival presents the world premiere of MacEllen’s deeply honest and human play, directed by Kitan Petkovski ('The Inheritance') and featuring a stellar cast.

Following a sellout performance in 2024, The Highly Strung Players return to fortyfivedownstairs with two plays by award-winning author Peter Rose, who founded this absurdist troupe more than thirty years ago. These are rehearsed readings, with a changing ensemble. The Highly Strung Players began appearing at fortyfivedownstairs in 2017.

A genius with language but convinced of his own ugliness, Cyrano secretly loves the radiant Roxane, who's fallen for the beautiful but inarticulate Christian. When Cyrano offers to ghost-write his rival's seduction, he sets in motion a poignant, hilarious, and ultimately devastating love triangle. Presented by Artefact Theatre Co. and directed by Matthew Cox ('Constellations'), this radical adaptation of Edmond Rostand's masterwork by Martin Crimp features Mark Yeates in the title role alongside a cast of 16! This isn't the Cyrano you think you know.

Gil is a loser. He works at McDonalds and still lives with Mother. But that’s all about to change because Gil has an ace up his sleeve: the biggest, baddest barnyard bird the world has ever seen. Following the success of 'The Crocodile' and 'Rhinoceros', Spinning Plates Co. collaborate with director Alexandra Aldrich to bring their ‘Beast Trilogy’ to its bloody, feathered conclusion with an “astonishingly entertaining” (NY Times) underdog story for our violent times. You’ve run with the rhino, wrestled the croc, now prepare thyself… it’s time for the cock.

After an amazing partnership in 2025, Melbourne International Comedy Festival returns for another venue takeover, presenting Anisa Nandaula's No Small Talk, Chris Parker's Take a Good Hard Look at Me, JKS: a Comedy(?) by Tom Ballard, and Tape Face 20.

Curated by renowned pianist Coady Green, the 2026 festival features a distinguished lineup of musicians, an eclectic array of repertoire, and several world premieres. Shakespeare’s shadow looms large, with musical interpretations by numerous classical and contemporary composers. The two-day Melbourne Mozart Project will also be a highlight, as twelve young pianists perform Mozart’s Piano Concertos before Coady Green and Kevin Tamanini undertake the extraordinary feat of performing Mozart’s complete works for four hands and two pianos in a single day.

Through Sarah Ruhl’s distinctive voice, the story of Eurydice and Orpheus is retold from a female perspective, weaving memory, love and loss into a dreamlike theatrical experience. Melbourne Shakespeare Company presents this luminous, poetic reimagining of Greek mythology, directed by multi-award-winner Gary Abrahams, whose productions of 'Angels in America' and 'The Ghetto Cabaret' have become milestones at fortyfivedownstairs.

A young scholar makes the discovery of the century – letters between James Joyce and comedy legend Groucho Marx – and believes she has secured her legacy. But in the cut-throat Joyce Industry, credit rarely goes to a woman. Between The Lines is a razor sharp, wryly witty literary mystery that follows her descent into a patriarchal web of ego and academic theft. As her groundbreaking discovery is hijacked by the very mentor she trusted to protect it, truth begins to blur. Packed with intellectual gymnastics and dramatic reversals, the story asks: who gets to own history? In a world of literary giants, you can’t trust even the evidence of your own eyes…

As Diana, a trans Filipina woman in Melbourne, prepares for her wedding, her plans are derailed by the death and inconvenient return of her estranged father’s ghost, endlessly singing Mr. Big’s 1991 hit To Be With You. Presented by Tayotayo Collective in association with fortyfivedownstairs, this dark comedy from award-winning writer/performer Dax Carnay-Hanrahan ('The Six Guys an Immigrant Trans Person of Colour will Date in Melbourne', La Mama) explores gender, grief, and inheritance under the direction of Beng Oh ('Soul of Possum').

Winner of the 2025 Sydney Fringe Festival Best in Spoken Word Award, this electrifying fusion of Indian dance, music, and spoken word confronts the unspoken realities of domestic violence within families with raw honesty, cultural depth, and courage. Shaped by the voices too often left out of the conversation, 'And What Will People Say?' challenges generational silence and invites audiences into a deeply personal journey of love, fear, shame, and resilience.

The acclaimed musical returns to Melbourne this July-August starring music theatre luminaries Helen Dallimore ('Wicked' and 'Legally Blonde') and Deidre Rubenstein ('My Fair Lady' and 'Shakespeare in Love') as the legendary mother daughter duo, Big and Little Edith (Edie) Bouvier Beale. This new production will be directed by Tyran Parke ('Elegies: A Song Cycle' and 'Ordinary Days') and presented by Clovelly Fox and fortyfivedownstairs.

Following multiple 2025 Green Room Award wins, local eccentrics Pummel Squad are back with a new play about shame, delusion, and the tyranny of normalcy. What starts as one man’s humiliating journey to get his nose back becomes a cacophony of tall-tales, testimonies, disputes and non-sequiturs that’ll all wrap up neatly in the end, they promise. Directed by Katy Maudlin ('Meet Me At Dawn', MTC), 'Marginalia' is a hilarious look at the feelings we push to the margins, and the foibles that are as obvious as the nose on your face.