CANBERRA Theatre Centre unveiled its 2019 “Collected Works” season at a packed launch performed by ACT Arts Minister Gordon Ramsay tonight (October 29).

Dominated by companies that come each year, the season holds few surprises, with the shining exception of a new venture, “Etcetera” – a collection of independent and alternative works yet to be unveiled.

However, we do know that actor Kate Mulvany will be here as part of that in “Prima Facie”, a one-hander that exposes the shortcomings of a patriarchal justice system. The idea is that management can pick up independent shows as they come to light, bulking the list up to an impressive 11 shows.

As well, add-on concerts are offered to subscribers for shows by American folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie and Aussie soprano Nicole Car with baritone-husband Etienne Dupuis.

An exciting piece of theatre will be seen in Belvoir’s 2017 sleeper hit, “Barbara and the Camp Dogs”, beginning as a rock gig with a real band, but turning more serious as musos Barbara and her cousin René, played by Ursula Yovich and Elaine Crombie, embark on a pilgrimage back home to country.

“Black Comedy” writer Nakkiah Lui’s latest play, “How to Rule the World”, is likely to have audiences rolling in the aisles as the old racist joke, “An Aboriginal, an Asian and an Islander walk into a bar,” morphs into a stinging satire on Australian politics.

The Melbourne Theatre Company will back for the first time since 2012 with a commercially enticing adaptation of Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s movie script “Shakespeare in Love” by Lee Hall, produced in association with Disney Theatrical Productions – Simon Phillips directs.

Describing the 2019 season as “a balance of timeless classics and hot-off-the-press new work,” programming manager at the theatre centre, Gill Hugonnet, has clearly aimed for popularity among subscribers with appearances from the Wharf, Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare, Belvoir, State Theatre Company SA as well as Bangarra Dance Theatre celebrating its 30th birthday and Sydney Dance Company marking its 50th.

But there are some twists to the successful formula.

We’ll get a double dose of Jonathan Biggins as he bookends the year with his Paul Keating bio-piece, “The Gospel According to Paul” in March and “The Wharf Revue”, which he co-wrote, in November – the latter will propose that the West is crumbling and the world is now run by morons with funny hair.

John Bell is long gone from Bell Shakespeare, but he’ll be back, now directed by present-day artistic director Peter Evans in Molière’s “The Miser”, one of the great comedies about human greed. The company will later return in an actual Shakespeare piece, “Much Ado About Nothing”, directed by James Evans.

Four actors will perform 139 roles in 100 minutes in “The 39 Steps”, based on the old Hitchcock movie and seen last year at Rep, in 2013 at The Q and in 2009 here at The Playhouse – this will be the State Theatre Company of SA’s 2016 sell-out production. Hugonnet knows a hit when she sees one.