By ANNA USHER

Judy Garland, Henrik Ibsen and a brand-new David Williamson comedy will light up Kirribilli’s harbourside Ensemble Theatre next year, as Australia’s oldest professional theatre unveiled a 10-play 2027 season stacked with four world premieres.

Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry opens the year on 22 January with Williamson’s sparkling new social comedy Sleeping Dogs, then hands his stage to two freshly commissioned Australian playwrights, Brittanie Shipway and Joanna Murray-Smith.

“It’s always exciting putting together a new season,” Kilmurry said in announcing the program. “Each year, as well as established plays, I am thrilled we can commission two new Australian playwrights.”

Shipway delivers a new comedy, Split Ends, which Kilmurry called “an exciting new comedy”. Murray-Smith returns with Bombshells 2, “a marvellous new take on the dilemmas of women’s lives”. Both were funded by the theatre’s Commissioners’ Circle, the group of backers Kilmurry singled out for thanks, saying “without our Commissioners’ Circle none of this would be possible”.

Garland, Ibsen and a lot of laughs

The big names come thick. Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow, a play with music built around Judy Garland’s last concert, brings the star’s songs to the Kirribilli stage. Kilmurry himself directs Hedda Gabler in Michael Meyer’s translation, a title he says has sat on his own bucket list for years.

The back half of the year leans hard into comedy. Kilmurry promised “a sprinkling of an enormously funny Noel Coward”, the 1925 farce Fallen Angels, which he also directs. Williamson features twice, his new Sleeping Dogs launching the season and his 1991 hit Money and Friends landing mid-year.

Yasmina Reza’s Life x 3 and Robert Lord’s festive family drama Joyful and Triumphant fill out a bill that runs from January clear through to the following summer. The theatre’s annual satirical revue returns in September as The Year in Tatters, reuniting Andrew Hansen, Mark Humphries, Emily Taheny and Chris Taylor.

“All ten plays in 2027 are dear to me,” Kilmurry said.

The boatshed that never closed

The Ensemble is a genuine lower north shore landmark, and one of the most remarkable in the country. It is Australia’s longest continuously running professional theatre, and it began right here.

American actor Hayes Gordon founded the company and its acting school in 1958, staging that first show in the Cammeray Children’s Library on 11 May. Gordon brought Stanislavski’s method acting to Australia and trained generations of local performers. In 1960 the company moved into an old boatshed on the shore of Careening Cove, and it has never left the water’s edge since.

Gordon passed the artistic reins to Sandra Bates in 1986. Kilmurry came in as her deputy, rose to co-director, and took the top job when Bates retired in 2015. Nearly 70 years on, the little theatre by the harbour is still packing them in.

Subscription packages for the 2027 season are on sale now, with single tickets to follow closer to each opening. Full details are at the Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli.

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