Stage
Blue – Heartbreak heartthrob’s one-man-show
Until 29 January at Belvoir Street theatre
As Malakai, Thomas Weatherall was one of the breakout stars/heartthrobs of Netflix’s hit reboot of Heartbreak High. In Blue – a new one-man show the 22-year-old both stars in and wrote – he plays Mark: a 20-year-old who’s just moved out of home when he receives a shocking letter from his mum, which he has to make sense of alone. The play deals in grief, masculinity, mental health and falling in love; he told us in an interview it’s “very personal fiction,” with some ripped verbatim from his teen diary. Eamon Flack, the artistic director at Belvoir, describes it as “a remarkable, genuinely exciting debut” from “a young man wise beyond his years”.
Tickets from $72+bf, with cheaper concessions
Are We There Yet? – Alison Lester classic on stage
Until 22 January at the Sydney Opera House
The incomparable children’s author Alison Lester transposed the notorious long-distance car trip lament into a call to adventure, in a beloved picture book that has delighted children for generations. Now award-winning playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer has turned it into a colourful and dynamic play for Sydney festival – a follow-up to his highly successful adaptation of Lester’s Magic Beach. Join the family as they travel around Australia, from Lester’s Sandy Beach all the way to the Kimberley and back.
Urinetown: The Musical – toilet humour with bite
Until 5 February at Hayes Theatre, Potts Point
Urinetown is set in a dystopian world with gargantuan queues outside of communal toilets where flushing is illegal – so, basically a Splendour campground. It’s all because of water shortages that have beset a near-future society ruled by monopolising overlords (sound familiar?), and one humble urinal becomes the site of intrigue, resistance and all-out warfare. The satirical show is twisty and absurd.
Parties and festivals
Sydney Lunar Streets – goodbye tiger, hello rabbit!
21 January – 5 February at Haymarket, Sydney
The year of the tiger makes way for that of the rabbit and Sydney’s Haymarket is the No 1 place to see it happen. The annual City of Sydney-sponsored lunar new year festival runs for two weeks, beginning with a 21 January evening of street performance, food markets, illuminated art installations, lion dancing and live music ranging from traditional folk styles to DJ sets – Insta moments aplenty and great eats to boot.
Yabun festival – Invasion Day commemorated
26 January at Victoria Park, Camperdown
First held in 2001, the annual family-friendly Yabun festival takes place on the green expanses of Victoria Park, on land that was once a rich hunting ground for the Gadigal people. Now it provides space to reflect on the loss of Aboriginal culture since the arrival of the first fleet and to celebrate its ongoing struggle and resilience. The vibe is welcoming, there are food stalls, art and craft markets, talks and performance to explore, and the Yabun stage hosts a live music program featuring sets from the Donovans, Marlene Cummins, Sounds of Freedom, Col Hardy, Loren Ryan, Pirra, Stiff Gins, Kobie Dee and Shakaya. Ska-rock-funk veterans Coloured Stone will see you into the evening.
New Beginnings – Elsy Wameyo headlines multicultural music festival
28 January at the Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour
Forgive the slightly new age-y name: New Beginnings is a festival run by Settlement Services International, a not-for-profit that supports refugees in Australia. All the usual suspects of a multicultural event are there, of course – food and market stalls aplenty – but there’s also a cracker music line-up featuring Indigenous rapper Birdz and Kenyan-Australian artist Elsy Wameyo, whose debut EP Nilotic we described in a Guardian interview as “historical and timely, meditative but frantic in its genre-hopping”.
Marrickville Block Party – a Hottest 100 party that’s actually good
28 January at the Great Club, Marrickville
Happy Triple J Hottest 100 day to all who celebrate, otherwise known as that time of year where you scramble to make plans two days out and inevitably end up in a weedy sharehouse backyard listening to the radio through a tinny Bluetooth speaker. This needs not be the case: The Great Club, located in one of Marrickville’s storied, divey buildings, is throwing an all-day rager with the Hottest 100 turned up loud and catering from local institution Baba’s Place. Plus, there are DJs after the countdown ends way too early.
Live music
Emma Donovan & Paul Grabowsky – one of Australia’s finest voices
19 January at the City Recital Hall, Sydney
Gumbaynggirr singer Donovan began performing gospel music as a child in her family’s band, the Donovans, emerging as a formidable solo artist. Now her remarkable voice is being paired with celebrated pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky, with a jazz band backing as Donovan sings gospel, country and blues favourites. This gig is part of City Recital Hall’s “Switched On” series, as they install a “world-class 360-degree spatial audio sound system” to make the hall “the first commercial venue in Australia capable of full spatial audio”. So there you go.
Kehlani – lovelorn R&B
25 January at Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park
Love, for Kehlani, has always been a psychodrama: the kind you spend years recounting on a therapist’s couch. In the R&B singer’s biggest tracks, including megahit Nights Like This, she takes stock of love’s humiliations – the various anxieties, the delusion that’s always attached to romance – and decides it’s worth it anyway. With a voice like that – “an onslaught of glistening vocals”, as the Guardian review of her last album Blue Water Road called it – we might just believe her.
Film and visual arts
Karla Dickens: Embracing Shadows – uncompromising art packed with wit
Until 12 March at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown
Wiradjuri artist Dickens is known for collage canvases that deal with big issues: Indigenous incarceration, global warming, mining greed, queer politics, domestic violence and colonisation. Heavy topics for sure, but there’s a dark sense of play here too, with bits and bobs gathered from garage sales and council pick-up piles finding their way into her art. Her first retrospective will feature key bodies of work alongside a new one, Disastrous: a series about the 2022 floods that wreaked havoc through the artist’s home region of the Northern Rivers.
Paul Yore: Word Made Flesh – a wild, queer future
Until 26 February at Carriageworks, Eveleigh
Melbourne artist Yore caught the attention of Sydney art viewers almost a decade ago when, aged 26, he was selected among the 14 early-career artists in the MCA’s annual Primavera show. Since then his trademark work – meticulously made, wildly colourful and provocative – has only become, well, even more so. His latest show, a queer alternative reality created from the ruins of the Anthropocene, is Yore’s anarchic vision at architectural scale: a riot of bizarre structures and sculpture, found objects, collage, painting, video, sound and light.
OpenAir cinema – films with a harbour view
Until 21 February at Mrs Macquarie’s Point, Sydney
We’re hoping La Niña has well and truly racked off by the time this harbourside open-air cinema series kicks off with a screening of Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film The Fabelmans. Other hot tickets on the program include Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness; the Australian premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale; Emily – the directorial debut from Australian actor Frances O’Connor; Cate Blanchett’s conductor drama Tár; and Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt. There’s a sprinkling of nostalgia too (Cinema Paradiso; Titanic; the original Top Gun) and a selection of dining and drinking options to round up the night.
Flickerfest – a short film festival
20 – 29 January at Bondi, Sydney
Bondi’s international short film festival turns 32 this year and it has 114 shorts to show, 80 of those homegrown. Flickerfest is recognised by both the Academy awards and Bafta, and always has some incredible films to see as filmmakers vie for award contention off the back of it. None of the films are more than 35 minutes long – some are only three! – so you could a) spend an evening watching about 20 films at Flickerfest, or b) go see Avatar 2.
