The Melbourne Theatre Company has announced its 2018 season, and it's one of the most well-heeled programs since artistic director Brett Sheehy took the reins of the company in 2013. It’s also one of the most daring, featuring five Australian premieres and five world premieres, as well as major showcases for some of the most innovative and provocative artists from Australia’s independent theatre scene.

Headlining the season will be the Australian premiere of the multi-award winning – including five Tony Awards and seven Olivier Awards – adaptation of the best-selling novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. It has taken more than four years of negotiation and planning to secure the production, which premiered to rave reviews at London’s National Theatre in 2012. The show will be co-presented by Arts Centre Melbourne.

MTC will also mirror this year’s A-list Shakespeare success, which saw Hollywood action-hero Jai Courtney tackle the Bard’s tortured Scot Macbeth, with legendary Aussie actor Geoffrey Rush taking on the clownish Malvolio in the comedic helter-skelter fantasy, Twelfth Night.

Rush isn’t the only big name to be gracing MTC’s stage next year. Kath And Kim star Gina Riley will star in Oscar Wilde’s irreverent farce An Ideal Husband, while Janet King star Marta Dusseldorp will helm the Australian premiere of recent Broadway hit A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath, a sequel to Ibsen’s bleak 19th-century classic. Linda Cropper, best known for her starring role in comedy-drama Offspring, will lead in The Architect, a new play by local playwright Aidan Fennessy, and Gold Logie Award-winner and musical theatre leading lady Lisa McCune will appear in the Australian premiere of another import from New York, Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

MTC’s programming strategies, engaging famous faces to star in their productions, has proven to be a commercial home run, with Jai Courtney’s Macbeth this year attracting thousands of first-time theatregoers. While there’s a similar thrust in 2018’s selection, there’s also plenty to excite even the pickiest of theatrephiles. Three of Australia's most revered actors, Pamela Rabe, Sarah Peirse, and William Zappa, will star in the Australian premiere of nuclear disaster thriller The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, the playwright behind the international smash hit play Chimerica. Patricia Cornelius, infamously known as the most celebrated and lauded Australian playwright never to have been staged by a major state theatre company, will finally receive a long overdue showcase, with the world premiere of a new adaptation of Lorca’s The House Of Bernarda Alba. One of the brightest lights in indie theatre, Little Ones Theatre director Stephen Nicolazzo, will also receive a thoroughly deserved showcase, directing Mike Leigh’s iconic comedy Abigail’s Party, which will star Eryn Jean Norvill as the titular hostess.

The bold and innovative work of Nicola Gunn, whose Piece For Person And Ghetto Blaster was the highlight of this year’s Dance Massive Festival, is one of the bravest commissions in MTC’s 2018 season, marking a notable departure from the conservative programming that has received some criticism in previous years. The world premiere of Gunn’s Working With Children will feature her trademark style of physical theatre and personal documentary.

Of his selection for 2018, MTC artistic director Brett Sheehy shared with The Music some of the limiting factors that play a role in making the best possible selection of work. “We’re a company that depends very heavily on commercial return, and that in itself poses challenges for programming. The work has to have an appeal to the theatregoing public. So when you’re looking at artists who might make very uncompromising work, who might make work that is outside of conventional expectations, that’s the biggest curatorial tightrope I have to walk, as you carry the artists you love along with you until it’s the right moment to say, ‘ok, now we’re ready for the story they want to tell, at this point in their career, to reach as many people as possible.’”

MTC Season 2018

Maintsage

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 
By Simon Stephens, based on the novel by Mark Haddon
Directed by Marianne Elliott
(January 11 to February 18)

The Children
By Lucy Kirkwood
Directed by Sarah Goodes
(February 3 to March 10)

Abigail’s Party
By Mike Leigh
Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo
(March 17 to April 21)

Wild
By Mike Bartlett
Directed by Dean Bryant
(May 5 to June 9)

The House of Bernarda Alba
By Patricia Cornelius, after Federico García Lorca
Directed by Leticia Caceres
(May 25 to July 7)

Gloria
By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Lee Lewis
(June 16 to July 21)

An Ideal Husband
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Dean Bryant
(July 16 to August 18)

A Doll’s House, Part 2
By Lucas Hnath
Directed by Sarah Goodes
(August 11 to September 15)

The Architect
By Aidan Fennessy
Directed by Peter Houghton
(September 27 to October 31)

Astroman
By Albert Belz
Directed by Sarah Goodes
(October 27 to December 8)

Twelfth Night
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Simon Phillips
(November 12 to December 29)

EDUCATION

Hungry Ghosts
By Jean Tong
Directed by Petra Kalive
(May 3 to 19)

STUDIO SEASON

Working with Children
By Nicola Gunn
(August 30 to September 29)