swimming at Barangaroo
Photograph: Supplied | Barangaroo
Photograph: Supplied | Barangaroo

The best things to do in Sydney this November

See out spring with a host of community festivals, gigs and long-awaited art exhibitions

Winnie Stubbs
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By the time November rolls around, we’re on the verge of abandoning our jackets and jumping headfirst into Sydney’s blistering days and balmy nights. But we’re not quite there yet. While we’re keen for an occasional splash at Sydney’s best beaches and glorious ocean pools, we’re also partial to a hideout in the city’s cool underground bars or a sunny afternoon in one of Sydney's best beer gardens.

When you're not whiling away the hours with a glass in hand, there's plenty of culture to catch this November – there's theatre galore, and galleries bursting with incredible masterworks – including a ground-breaking exhibition of surrealist work at the Art Gallery of NSW, and a transcendent exhibit exploring the concept of immortality through art at Chippendale’s White Rabbit Gallery.

There’s also a heap of fun (and free) stuff going down at Barangaroo, a mammoth fundraising concert bringing big names to the ICC, and the two-week long Garage Sale Trail bringing pop-up markets to backyards across the city.

So why not put a spring in your synapses as Sydney strides into summer with a trip to one of these superb cultural events.

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Keep edging towards summer at one of Sydney's best waterfront bars, or one of the best rooftop bars in the city.

November's biggest events

  • Musicals
  • Millers Point
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

[Content note: this review discusses themes of suicide and mental health issues. If you need support, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or find more options at healthdirect.gov.au.] I suspect anyone reading this is either a huge fan of Dear Evan Hansen, or you’re not. The middle ground is sparsely populated. If you’re part of the former cohort, it’s because the show is beloved in musical theatre circles and revered by critics. It’s a new classic in the canon, and we don’t get those too often. Premiering on Broadway in 2016, it was an instant hit, and at the 71st Tony Awards it handily scooped up six out of nine nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book for Steven Levenson, Best Score for Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Best Actor for Ben Platt, and Best Featured Actress for Rachel Bay Jones. It’s now making its Australian debut at the Roslyn Packer Theatre ahead of a national tour, and its reputation ensures an audience is built in – expect tickets to go fast. If you’re part of the latter, that’s probably down to the widely derided 2021 screen adaptation, which saw Platt, at the age of 27, reprise the title role, a move that drew scathing criticism – largely because he very much did not look like a teenager, especially alongside his age-appropriate co-stars. The film tanked, and the play closed shortly thereafter (in fairness, the pandemic didn’t help). Perfectly cast, perfectly mounted, perfectly polished...and surprisingly complex in its themes I was in the latter group.

  • Drama
  • Sydney
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

This dazzling production of Yentl opens with a command: “Once you say ‘A’, you must say ‘B’”. It’s not said by our eponymous lead (the effervescent Amy Hack as Yentl), but maybe it should be. They are the bookish one, after all. Forbidden to study the Talmud as a woman, they’ve spent years prying the occasional theology lesson out of their father and reading the Torah on the sly. They know the near-divine power of language more than most; the way it obliges us to participate in it to understand and express ourselves, to worship, or to love.  The Yentl we encounter in this mystical adaptation at Sydney Opera House from Kadmiah Yiddish Theatre (presented with Monstrous Theatre and Neil Gooding Productions) seeks out a new language, or rather finds something new in an old language; a way of understanding Jewishness and Jewish womanhood that embraces the liminal, the inexpressible, and the ancient. And they begin by giving themselves a new name, a male name that will allow them to become a scholar of the Talmud: Anshl.  What they’ve accomplished is nothing short of magic – an explicitly queer retelling of a story made famous by a Barbara Streisand-led 1983 film Rather than overstate the novelty of these ideas, co-writers Gary Abrahams, Elise Esther Hearst and Galit Klas show just how deeply rooted they already are in Jewish lore, theology and myth. What they’ve accomplished is nothing short of magic – an explicitly queer retelling of a story made famous by a Barbara Streisand-le

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  • Things to do
  • Eveleigh

Got the travel bug? Global travel platform Klook is launching Sydney’s newest travel event and its set to take over Carriageworks, giving you access to exclusive travel discounts, prizes and expert travel tips. Best of all? It’s free to attend. On Saturday, November 30, Klook Travel Fest is touching down in Sydney and gearing up to be the city’s biggest travel event of the year, with more than 20,000 visitors expected. TV personality Faustina ‘Fuzzy’ Agolley will be taking to the stage and giving out huge prizes and flash deals every hour – everything from tickets for Movie World, Sea World and Wet ‘n’ Wild to big discounts on tickets to Universal Studios Japan and Disneyland Resort in California. Major prizes – including trips to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Vietnam and Japan – will also be up for grabs. 'Klook Kreators' Kat and Deja Clark and Sofia Ligeros will join Fuzzy on stage to chat about all things travel and answer any audience questions. The festival will be split into destination and dedicated experience-focused sections including Hong Kong, Europe, Singapore, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Los Angeles, Nevada, Bali, Disneyland Resort in California and Walt Disney World Resort in Florida – plus a ‘rest of the world’ area. At each ‘world’, you’ll find destination experts offering insider travel tips as well as even more deals on activities and experiences, exclusive to event visitors. The event will be themed around classic ’90s console games – hop around each ‘world sec

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  • Art
  • Design
  • The Rocks

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia sure knows how to party. This November, Circular Quay’s temple of future-forward art is handing over its Foundation Hall and Level One foyer for a massive night of performances, art, DJ sets and more. For the latest edition of Artbar, the visionary founders Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales of the groundbreaking fashion house Romance Was Born have curated an immersive night of art and entertainment on Friday, November 8 in response to the theme of ‘Romance’.  To celebrate romance in all its forms, Plunkett and Sales will transform the museum into a dreamy prom night, complete with serenades, corsages, and wedding band covers. Plus, exhibitions from Isaac Julien and Julie Rrap – all of which you can enjoy after-dark. There’s an epic line-up of local artists on music duties, including the Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist DJ Aunty Jonny, the duo Chakita playing Love Song Dedications and the dreamy synth-pop singer Montomery.  You can also encounter the works of textile sculptor Troy Emery and see his colourful, sculptural creations up close. Performance artist and poet Meagan Pelham will be writing love notes on the night and chameleon of the stage and screen and former RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under's Top 4 Hollywould Star, is set to deliver a powerhouse performance.  First release tickets for this 18+ event have already sold out, so make sure to grab yours from the second release, now on sale for $51–$60. MCA members can score 15 per c

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  • Musicals
  • Darling Harbour
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

It was always inevitable that Hamilton would make its way Down Under. It’s been almost three years since Lin-Manuel Miranda’s game-changing musical made its five-star Sydney debut in March 2021, and was met with overwhelming audience and critical acclaim. Remarkably, this was also the first production of the Broadway mega-hit to open anywhere in the world, following global pandemic lockdowns. A roaring success, the show went on to tour to Melbourne, Brisbane, New Zealand, and across Asia. Now, Hamilton’s back for round two. The Sydney Lyric Theatre’s exclusive return season reuniting some of the original Australasian cast with mind-boggling new talents, some of whom are making their professional theatre debut (not that you’d even guess).  So, in the year 2024, does the pop-culture hype around Hamilton maintain its heat? And can the live production withstand the test of time, especially when you can stream the original Broadway cast recording on Disney+ for $13.99? The simple answer to both questions is: yes. Although, anyone who is unfamiliar with the Hamilton lore might benefit from reading up on it beforehand (we’ve explained it briefly over here). For Australian audiences, the draw of Hamilton is not really the plot, which holds many contradictions (even Miranda himself admits to that). But if you know anything about the show, you know that the true ingenuity (aside from the game-changing race-reverse casting) lies in Miranda’s magical, genre-defying score – and by bringin

  • Art
  • Galleries
  • Sydney

Jaws were on the floor earlier this year when the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced that it had secured Australia’s biggest and first-ever retrospective exhibition dedicated to the one and only René Magritte. Opening at the end of October, and sticking around until February 2025, consider Sydney art fiends' summer plans settled.  The exhibition titled ‘Magritte’ is part of Sydney’s International Art Series spanning 2024 and 2025. Getting in on the action are the state gallery’s Cao Fei: My City is Yours, and the MCA's Julie Mehretu exhibitions.  You could consider Magritte the master of symbols, and you’ve likely seen his plastered all over the place: clouds, bowler hats, pipes… well, *not* pipes, to be precise. The exhibition takes art lovers and history fanatics through 20 years worth of Magritte’s paintings, starting from the 1920s in the height of the surrealist movement. More than 100 works make up the showing, and they’ve been flown in from all over the world including from the MoMA in New York, the Musée Magritte in Brussels, Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art, plus other museums and even some private collections too.  Magritte opens at the Art Gallery of NSW in the South Building’s Lower Level 2 on October 26 and will be there until February 9, 2025. The exhibition is a ticketed event, and prices start from, $30 for members and $35 for adults, or you can save some pennies by purchasing two for one tickets on Wednesday nights or this ultra pass to all three

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  • Art
  • Galleries
  • Darling Harbour

If you can’t quite hack the requisite international airfare and/or annual leave to explore the Amazon, meet polar bears, or go deep sea diving right now, there is another method for getting up close and personal with some of the world’s most incredible animals.  For the 59th year in a row, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition will arrive in Sydney on loan from London’s Natural History Museum. Taking root at the National Maritime Museum, this stunning collection of photographs will be on show in Sydney from Saturday, June 15 until November 2024.  This incredibly prestigious photography event is centred on drawing attention to the wild beauty and fragility of the natural world. This year, judges had to look at nearly 50,000 entries from a line-up of professional and amateur photographers across 95 countries, being faced with the near-impossible task of whittling these down to just over 100 photo finalists. The images that made this year’s exhibition shine a light on the strain that our natural environment is under as a result of human intervention, and capture mesmerising snapshots of fascinating animal behaviour, stunning secret moments in the hearts of the world’s most unreachable places.The prestigious Grand Title this year went to French photographer Laurent Ballesta, whose surreal image of a golden horseshoe crab has earned him the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year for the second time. So, if you are in the mood to escape reality, dive into strange an

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  • Musicals
  • Sydney
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived… and now, live in concert! Holy numerical, the Six pack is back in action. (But the question remains, was it ever out of action?) This pop-powered global phenomenon has already had multiple record-breaking seasons across the country, and now due to popular demand, the disgraced wives of King Henry VIII are back at the Theatre Royal in ye olde Sydneytown following an enthusiastic welcome in Melbourne.  “What if the Spice Girls did a concept album about King Henry VIII’s wives, and Baz Luhrmann directed the concert video?” – Six the Musical has perhaps never been better summarised than in these words, directly quoted from critic Travis Johnson’s review of the production that hit The Studio at the Sydney Opera House between lockdowns in 2020. For the uninitiated, this unconventional pop-rock musical takes a dry historical topic, and turns it into a rowdy 80-minute concert primed to rival the world’s biggest pop groups.  Everyone knows that King Henry VIII had not four, not five, but six wives – enough to require a mnemonic technique to keep track. History (aka “his story”) has reduced the legacies of these ladies to little more than singular words in a rhyme that details their fearsome fates, but what if we carved out space to remember them as real, three-dimensional women?  Six the Musical takes on this noble task by embracing a far-fetched premise: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine H

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  • Things to do
  • Barangaroo

Summer is setting in, and while us Surry Hills-based office workers are forced to seek our weekday sunshine in Prince Alfred Park (no terrible fate, especially if you can fit in a swim), those based in the harbour-front precinct of Barangaroo can get active with a series of free community activities.  On Wednesday lunchtimes (up until Wednesday, December 18), Barangaroo Reserve will play host to a series of free-to-attend First Nations-inspired yoga classes. Led by proud Dharawal and Gumbaynggirr woman Jacqui Jarrett, Yoga on Country takes place on Stargazer Lawn at 12.30pm every Wednesday, and is a magical way to connect with the land and waters that we see and touch every day. The 60-minute classes celebrate First Nations cultural beliefs, inviting participants to listen, learn and breathe. You’ll need to register if you’re keen to join, and you can do that over here. If you’re looking for a less introspective lunchtime activity, there’s a free Pickleball tournament going down at Harbour Park Community Recreation Space every Tuesday and Wednesday lunchtime. The 20-minute games take place between 12pm and 2pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays – you can register (either as a two-person team, or solo to be paired up with another player) over here.  Keen to get moving on the last day of the working week? Barangaroo Run Club meets every Friday morning, with runners meeting at Hickson Park at 7.15am. The hour-long sessions range from slow-paced jogs to high-impact training drills, depen

  • Drama
  • Sydney

Do you know the one about the love triangle behind one of Australia’s most famous artistic exports? And the remarkable woman, who many argue was the guiding hand behind Sidney Nolan’s iconic Ned Kelly paintings? Get down to the Sydney Opera House to see how the paint and passion plays out in Sunday. Under the guidance of acclaimed director Sarah Goodes (Julia), this is playwright Anthony Weigh’s tribute to the late patron of the arts and Melbourne icon, Sunday Reed.  The extraordinary Nikki Shiels reprises her role in this Melbourne Theatre Company production, which is brought to the Harbour City with the helping hand of Sydney Theatre Company. A woman ahead of her time, Sunday Reed helped shape Australian modernism by co-founding the Heide artistic commune with her husband John Reed (played by Matt Day) on Melbourne’s then-rural edges in the 1930s.  The play focuses on the passionate love triangle between the Reeds and the Heide Circle’s most notable member, Sidney Nolan (James O’Connell). They are joined by Ratidzo Mambo as celebrated modernist painter Joy Hester, and Jude Hyland as Sweeney Reed.As attested by critic Stephen A Russell in his three-star review of Sunday’s debut in Melbourne, there is brilliance to be discovered amidst the play’s somewhat dreary staging and drawn-out runtime. Especially when Shiels – who “shines as bright as the dappled Melbourne sunlight” – is given space to shine. After all, she is an actor of such high calibre that she swung in for Eryn-Je

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