Sydney’s top theatre companies and venues

Belvoir St Theatre

Belvoir specialises in bold readings of the classics and new Australian plays, with a strong history of exploring indigenous voices and the Aboriginal experience in contemporary Australia. Many of the country’s best actors and directors have created their strongest work in collaboration with the company – think Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh. The company’s home is the once shabby ex-tomato sauce factory – now the entirely respectable Belvoir Street Theatre. Belvoir stages productions in its intimate 350-seat Upstairs Theatre and its more intimate 80-seat Downstairs Theatre.

Griffin Theatre Company

One of the essential engines of Sydney’s theatre scene, Griffin is the city’s only company solely dedicated to nurturing, developing and performing new Australian work. Founded in 1978, this not-for-profit venture produces four to six shows a year at the SBW Stables Theatre and a strong independent theatre programme. The annual Griffin Award for the best unproduced new Australian play is also an important event in the local calendar. Hit films Lantana and The Boys both started their lives as plays here and were revived on stage in recent years.

Sydney Theatre Company

STC productions are staged in several venues. Each gives us a clue as to the different theatre experiences the STC has to offer: the intimate Wharf Theatres (boasting Sydney’s best foyer and bar), the comfortably furnished Drama Theatre at the Opera House and the 896-seat Sydney Theatre (the go-to theatre for a ‘big night out’). You're likely to spot big names at any one of these theatres – the likes of Hugo Weaving, Miranda Otto, and artistic director Cate Blanchett regularly tread the boards with the company. STC also programs STC ED, an education season for school-age audiences, and makes a point of bringing overseas talent to Australian audiences, including the landmark August: Osage County in 2010.

New Theatre

Established back in 1932 as a workers’ theatre, the New – like Newtown, the once working-class inner-city suburb in which it resides – has changed substantially over the decades. Although it’s still committed to political and socially enquiring work, the company has moved away from simplistic agit-prop and now has a wide remit ranging across classics, neglected Australian repertoire, contemporary European and American work, gay theatre and musicals performed on its stage in King Street. Technically amateur (the actors are all unpaid), the New is at its best when mounting large-cast classics that are no longer considered economically viable anywhere else.

Tamarama Rock Surfers

Founded in 1997 by a desperately hip yet talented collective of Sydney actors called the Tamarama Rock Surfers Theatre Company, and located under an old backpacker’s pub, the Old Fitzroy Theatre has a reputation of hosting bleeding-edge work, new talent and whatever’s currently hip, hot or happening. It hosts up to 12 main productions a year and also puts on the work of visiting companies. In 2011 Tamarama took over a second venue: the sun-kissed Bondi Pavilion.

Ensemble Theatre

Founded in 1958 by American Hayes Gordon, the Ensemble is the oldest surviving professional theatre company in NSW. Sandra Bates is the artistic director, a role she’s held for more than 20 years. The company manages without government funding, though it treads a fine line between cosseting and challenging the legion of loyal subscribers on whom it depends. Among its usual highlights is a combination of new plays and seasoned classics, and it has become the theatre of choice for new work from playwright David Williamson. It has its own theatre on the water in Kirribilli.

Sydney Opera House

Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s difficult child, the Opera House is a wonderful piece of sculpture masquerading as a functional arts venue. Despite the fact that it’s best appreciated from the outside, experiencing the weirdness of Sydney’s best-known built icon is a must. In addition to the Opera Theatre and the larger Concert Hall, it contains three theatre spaces: the Drama Theatre (notoriously widescreen and distant), the smaller Playhouse (mid-sized) and the Studio (a late attempt to reclaim the funk). Regardless of the building’s drawbacks, the work is up there with Sydney’s best, with the STC and Bell Shakespeare making regular appearances, Sydney Festival productions popping in annually and a spate of excellent touring shows throughout the year.

Carriageworks

Worth visiting for the space alone, Carriageworks is the latest incarnation of the Eveleigh Rail Yards. Built in the 1880s, its cavernous interiors are faithfully preserved, giving it a limitlessness very different from the plush cocoons of most theatres. Hosting the likes of innovative multi-disciplinary theatre-makers Performance Space, Carriageworks is gaining a reputation as the venue for the most progressive Sydney drama, dance and art.

Lyric Theatre

The Star is Sydney's aggressively secular temple to sensation and Indulgence, which theatrically are to be found in the brightest and glossiest of musical theatre productions such as Annie and Hairspray. If too much of a good thing appeals, or you feel like wallowing in lavish stagings and lashings of chorus girls, then Sydney's own Vegas-style venue will sate your desires.

Capitol Theatre

Completed in 1893, the interior of the Capitol (originally known as the Hippodrome) was designed by an American theatre specialist to create the illusion of sitting outdoors under the stars. Like most illusions, it generally fails. Once reduced to being a too-big porn cinema and then nearly derelict for years, the Capitol was expensively and extensively restored just as the fashion for gargantuan long-running musicals peaked. It’s thoroughly kitsch, and the perfect venue for such long-running shows as the worldwide hits The Lion King, Billy Elliot, Wicked and Mary Poppins.

Seymour Centre

Taking its cues roughly from the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Seymour Centre is home to the sometimes-too-big York Theatre, the sometimes-too-cold Everest Theatre, but also the Reginald Theatre – just the right space for small-scale work from popular Sydney indies. The outdoor bar area is great on a summer's night come Sydney Festival time.

Darlinghurst Theatre

Darlinghurst Theatre is one of Sydney’s best-value theatres. Darlinghurst Theatre Company co-produces a variety of new work and updated classics in collaboration with a range of local and touring companies. At the time of writing, the 111-seat Darlinghurst Theatre has comfortable, individually sponsored seats (with name-plates – which semi-famous actor will you sit on tonight?) and excellent sight lines, but they are finalising plans to make a new home in the Eternity Playhouse. They’re due to set up shop there in 2013.

Slide

For lovers of cabaret, it’s impossible to go past this former bank, with its creative bill of live performances by local and touring singer-songwriters. A welcome alternative to the stock-standard drag shows scattered throughout Oxford Street’s string of venues. Slide’s signature serving is its unique degustation menu night El Circo: a nine-course meal-athon with a different circus act for every course.

Riverside Theatres

Parramatta’s multi-theatre complex is a mere ferry ride away from the city, perched beside a dried-up patch of the Parramatta River. It stages shows touring from around Australia, including inner Sydney stalwarts Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Dance Company and Griffin, and also regularly screens productions in the National Theatre Live season.