The 'kooky' show that lured Celeste Barber back to the theatre

Comedian Celeste Barber is set to return to theatre for the first time in 20 years in "kooky" comedy play The Book of Liz.

While her last stage role was in 2006, the comedian and actor, known for Wellmania and Colin from Accounts, told ABC Arts in 2023 working at Sydney Theatre Company (STC) was "on the bucket list". 

As the company launches its 2027 season, she says starring in The Book of Liz is "a dream come true". 

It's a full-circle moment for Barber, who worked at the theatre's restaurant back in 2003, the year after she finished drama school.

She recalls her then-roommate landing a role alongside Hugo Weaving in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing that year.

"I was cleaning cutlery at the end of the shift and looking down the corridor at them in the green room together running lines," she says.

"I remember thinking, as I scrubbed crusty pasta of a fork, 'One day that will be me'. And now it's happening."

Premiering Off-Broadway in 2001, The Book of Liz is a play by American siblings Amy and David Sedaris — Amy best known for Bojack Horseman and surreal sketch show At Home with Amy Sedaris, and David for his comic essays.

Barber will play the relentlessly positive Sister Elizabeth Donderstock, who decides to leave her cloistered community after she's forced to give up her treasured cheese ball recipe.

She soon finds a job as a waitress at a family-run restaurant, with help from a bizarrely Cockney-accented Ukrainian couple. They're just two of the eccentrics Liz encounters as she adjusts to life away from her community.

It was the opportunity to work on a play by the Sedaris siblings, who write together as "The Talent Family", that lured Barber back to the stage.

"I loved [The Book of Liz] as soon as I read it," Barber says. "It made me laugh.

"I feel like a Sedaris play about an Amish cheese ball maker who is on a quest to find herself is exactly what the world needs: something funny, with heart." 

Stepping away from theatre for 20 years wasn't deliberate, the comedian adds, but a "pivot" because she "couldn't book a job or even get an audition".

To play Liz, Barber plans to draw on the skills in character comedy she's finessed over more than a decade as a stand-up, but is most excited by the chance to work collaboratively.

"My favourite part of performing is diving in and picking apart a character and finding out what makes them tick, what makes them laugh, cry, fart, scream," she says. 

"That's where the juice is.

"I plan on approaching this play in the way I approach most things: panicked. Then as soon I step into the rehearsal room I'll take on the form of a human sponge.

"I love rehearsal rooms; I love working and performing with other people. I love actors and I love notes!"

The Book of Liz is one of 13 plays in STC's 2027 season, which also includes a Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries play, and an adaptation of Jenny Hocking's The Palace Letters, starring Georgie Parker (Dalliance), about efforts to unseal papers about Gough Whitlam's dismissal in 1975.

The season is artistic director Mitchell Butel's second, with his leadership steering the company to its first surplus — of $765,759 — since 2022.

That success is expected to continue, with ticket sales for 2026 already surpassing last year, thanks to new John Farnham musical Whispering Jack and An Iliad, starring David Wenham.

"There's always work to do and we have massive targets to keep the door open," Butel says.

"But hard as it is to produce theatre that's commercially successful, it's a great privilege and honour to do it, and we should celebrate it."

Companies working together

An Iliad will tour Melbourne in 2027, with more cities expected to be announced. It's just one example of STC collaborating with theatre companies, festivals and venues across Australia in 2027 to extend the life spans of local productions.

In another modern adaptation of an ancient Greek text, Oedipus becomes a political thriller set on election night. It will star Richard Roxburgh and Heather Mitchell and will head to Adelaide Festival.

Keeping with the theme of reinterpreting classic plays, STC also co-produces John Proctor Is the Villain, with Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), which interrogates Arthur Miller's The Crucible through the eyes of high school students.

In one of the season's literary adaptations, STC and State Theatre Company South Australia (STCSA) will collaborate on The Bookbinder of Jericho, about twin sisters working in a bindery during WWI, from the same team behind the sell-out success of The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Logan St, about an unlikely friendship between an Aboriginal woman and an Afghan cameleer in Adelaide in the 1940s, transfers from STCSA.

Co-produced by STC, Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) and Jones Theatrical Group, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: Death by Deckchair is set on a boat and takes as its starting point one of the late Kerry Greenwood's novels not previously adapted for TV.

English writer Jack Thorne's reinterpretation of A Christmas Carol, which has played at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre every year since 2022, will come to Sydney for the first time, starring Tim Minchin in his first play since 2013.

Butel says collaborations across Australian theatre like these are "really important".

"Because you're sharing costs, there's suddenly an ability to up cast sizes," he says.

"Bookbinder's a cast of eight, John Proctor is a cast of nine. Oedipus is a cast of 11, A Christmas Carol is a cast of 18. They're pretty large-scale shows for us."

A theatre for actors

Cast size isn't the only thing determining the scale of a production: The now-international "cine-theatre" hit The Picture of Dorian Gray will return to Australia, with Nikki Shiels (Colin from Accounts) playing all 26 characters.

It's not Shiels's first time in the role, having been the alternate performer, or understudy, since 2022. Next year she'll be taking over full-time from Eryn Jean Norvill, who originated the production.

Norvill will star in a one-woman show of her own as part of STC's 2027 season: Vanya, a new adaptation of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's play, first brought to the stage by Andrew Scott (Fleabag).

Vanya is another example, along with The Book of Liz, of how Butel likes to program a season.

"I'm finding actors I love and want to be on our stage and asking 'What's going to float your boat?" Butel says.

That approach also led to Andrea Dimitriades (ABC TV's Return to Paradise) starring in the Australian premiere of Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw, loosely based on William Thackeray's Victorian satire Vanity Fair.

Co-starring in Becky Shaw is Lincoln Younes (Last King of the Cross), in his first theatre role in a decade. He's just one screen star coming to STC, alongside Erik Thomson (Packed to the Rafters) in West End hit The Fifth Step and Gold Logie winner Lynne McGranger (Home and Away) and Annette Shun Wah in Disapol Savetsila's road trip comedy Amah and Nanna.

Developed by Bathurst's Arbour Theatre Company, co-founded by Savetsila in 2020, Amah and Nanna was the winner of this year's Patrick White Award. Earlier play readings were hosted at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre.

"It actually shows the benefit of funding regional arts centres to do this kind of work, because they have the ability to workshop stories that are of the regions," Butel says.

STC's 2027 season feels notable for its sheer breadth, which might account for the company's success since Butel took the reins.

"We're often accused of being elitist … but it's not all high art," he says.

"For every Uncle Vanya, there's also this kooky, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt-like fall into the rabbit hole [like The Book of Liz].

"Some people like KFC; some people like caviar. We'll provide it all for you."