January events in Sydney

Since the mid-1980s, Penn & Teller have been the most bankable magic double act on the planet, combining hilarious sight gags with sleight-of-hand magic and grand illusion. Somehow, they've managed to never visit our shores, but are righting that three-and-a-half-decade wrong with eight shows at the Sydney Opera House.

This Sydney Festival show is all about the coming together of First Nations cultures and communities. It follows the nuptials of Māori woman Hera and Aboriginal man Kane. That much is simple enough, but there’s a wild (and properly funny) clash of cultures as the two families come together for the celebration.

Sing along if you know this one: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Six the Musical is set to have its Australian premiere. Much like Hamilton before it, the pop musical is making history buffs out of legions of musical theatre tragics, telling the story of the six wives of Henry VIII.

In 1990, Jimmy Chi's musical about a runaway teenage Aboriginal boy on an eye-opening road trip became a surprise hit. It was Australia's first Aboriginal musical, and now it's returning for a 30th anniversary tour produced by a group of Australia's biggest opera companies (but the rock and pop-inspired score isn't going to get an operatic bent).

John Cassavetes’ 1977 movie about an ageing actress self-combusting in the out-of-town tryouts for a new Broadway show has developed a devoted cult following since its premiere. Now a new stage version, by auteur director Cyril Teste, is one of the headlining events at Sydney Festival.

Like all great art, Hofesh Schechter's Grand Finale is a work up for interpretation. Certainly, it’s about youth and the power inherent in the young; they’re enraged, armed and almost preternaturally responsive to the pressures bearing in on them. It’s also a distinctly urban work, concerned with the constraints and the thrills of metropolitan confinement.

In 1868, a group of Aboriginal cricketers embarked upon a pioneering journey to England and became the first Australian sporting team to tour internationally. This funny and affecting play by Geoffrey Atherden gives their leader Johnny Mullagh his appropriate due and questions how history has treated this legend.

Here's an ogre-sized announcement: Broadway's musical version of the much-loved 2001 Dreamworks movie Shrek is making its Australian professional debut in January 2020 at the Sydney Lyric Theatre. It's very much the ogre-meets-princess story you know and love from the original film.

Strut & Fret’s latest, ambitiously titled Life: The Show is slightly serious for a circus-comedy. It traces the trials of one man’s often mundane life, seeking to pose some existential questions. Expect a dazzling soundtrack, plenty of comedy, adults-only clowning, and even an aerial act in a giant, condom-like plastic tube.

Tim Sharp, a Queensland artist who has autism, created the mystical superhero Laser Beak Man when he was just 11 years old as a way of sharing his humour and imagination with the world. One of Laser Beak Man's most formidable forms is as the star of his own stage show.

A trip to see the Flying Fruit Fly Circus delivers many OMG circus moments, but with the added jaw-drop that these are youth performers, aged 8-18. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Australia’s national youth circus, this major new work brings together the troupe's full ranks.

In many ways, now is the perfect time to revisit Joan Didion’s 1979 essay about the end of an era – as an American counter-culture started to crush itself. That sort of cultural disintegration feels all too familiar to us now, which is why director and artist Lars Jan has adapted the work for the stage. 

Stephanie Lake's spectacular Colossus premiered in 2018 as part of Melbourne Fringe and is returning for a Sydney Festival season in 2020. It will unleash power, mould it and bunch it, and throw it around the space, in ways that are thrilling and frightening and entirely unforgettable.

It’s almost miraculous that the Australian theatre dream team of writers Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and composer Irine Vela are back together again. But the opportunity presented by Anthem – to collectively grapple with what this country is, and the conflicts that lie at its core – proved too lucrative to resist. 

It is one thing to watch a magic show, with an illusionist able to deliver smooth patter and clever conjuring from the distance of a stage. But it's a very different matter to have dinner with a 'mentalist' and illusionist and experience the magic at close quarters and in an unpredictable setting.