Melbourne theatre and musicals in November

This musical from Kander and Ebb (the songwriting team behind Cabaret and Chicago) has never before had a professional mainstage production in Australia. This new production stars Australia’s own Broadway and West End star (she played the leading role in Chicago on Broadway), Caroline O’Connor. 

When Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins premiered in 1990, George Bush Sr was in power and the Gulf War was underway. Audiences during war time weren’t really ready for a musical about the dark heart of the American dream, and it closed early. In 2004 it was remounted on Broadway and won four Tonys. Its time had come. Come from Away feels like the reverse: a musical that suits its time, is perhaps even flattered a little by it.

Cabaret chanteuse, and master of pandemonium, Meow Meow stars in this fabulously shambolic show. She’ll come wandering into the Malthouse at each performance looking for room in the Inn. Yes, she’s taking on Christmas. 

The first rule of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is that you don’t talk about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Safeguarding spoilers is an expected responsibility for anyone who attends the Potter-verse’s first on-stage outing. There’s even a hashtag: #KeepTheSecrets. But in truth (as far as theatre critique is concerned, at least), JK Rowling needn’t have worried. 

Nicole Kidman starred in the West End premiere of this play by Anna Ziegler about scientist Rosalind Franklin, who played an integral role in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA but is often overlooked. 

It’s time to say goodbye to Mish Grigor. Not that her career is over or anything, but her next darkly funny performance piece is all about grand exits. Teaming up with contemporary art organisation Aphids (Lara Thoms and Eugenia Lim), Grigor will perform a series of exits on repeat; she’ll leave the stage, leave the building and maybe even leave the country.

On January 30 2003, legendary writer Joan Didion’s life changed forever. On Christmas Day, her beloved only daughter, Quintana, had been hospitalised with an unknown and rapidly escalating illness. Then, five days later, after returning from visiting the now-unconscious Quintana, Didion’s husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne, suffered a massive heart attack and died. 

This Covent Garden production, by noted Scottish director David McVicar, is finally coming to Melbourne with Teddy Tahu Rhodes as the devil and Maria Mudryak as Marguerite. The opera is gorgeously tuneful and tells the story of Faust, a man who makes an unlikely deal with the devil. 

This Graeme Murphy production of Turandot is one of Opera Australia's great evergreens, having debuted in 1990. It still looks fabulous, driven by dance and and an otherworldly design. Lise Lindstrom will sing the title role opposite Walter Fraccaro as Calaf – who sings Pavarotti’s greatest hit, ‘Nessun Dorma’.