In a sweeping gesture signalling generational change, the 92 -year-old Canberra Rep has announced a line-up of almost entirely youthful directors for its 2025 season, announced on Friday evening.

Opening the new season in February will be Baby Jane, adapted and directed by Ed Wightman, running February 20-March 8.

Wightman, a brilliant ANU graduate and former Rep scholar who went on to win the David Suchet scholarship at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, is a professional director and actor who has been back several times to direct for the company.

He’s adapted Baby Jane from the novel Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell. It’s a thriller, about two reclusive sisters living together in a decaying Hollywood mansion that looks at the complexities of family, sibling rivalry and fame.

In May will be Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, directed by another product of the ANU, Lachlan Houen, already known for his edgy productions of Mr. Burns, An Ideal Husband and The Laramie Project on campus and Lord of the Flies for Rep, and as assistant director at ACT Hub on Five Women Wearing the Same Dress and The Inheritance.

The famous Coward play dabbles in psychic phenomena, so expect witty dialogue, ghosts and poltergeists.

The third play in June is A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath, which picks up 15 years after Ibsen’s Nora famously walks out on her husband and kids. This one, last seen in 2019 at The Street Theatre, will be directed by Joel Horwood, a WAAPA acting graduate who’s turned to directing in the past year with King Lear and Every Brilliant Thing.

The last time Rep did an Agatha Christie it was Witness for the Prosecution, directed by Aarne Neeme in 2016, but in July Ylaria Rogers, founder- director of Heart Strings Theatre Co, takes on Christie’s Spider’s Web. Set, of course in an English country manor house, it shows how Clarissa’s lies weave a tangled web.

Alexandra Pelvin, a staunch Rep member who has already directed Hotel Sorrento and Home, I’m Darling, will take on Joanna Norland’s play, Lizzy, Darcy & Jane in September. This is Jane Austen fan fiction with a difference, as Jane pits her wits against Elizabeth, but who is in control? This follows Rep’s production of Mr Bennet’s Bride earlier this year.

Bringing up the rear just before Christmas is the one veteran among the directorial line-up, Cate Clelland.

She will take on Low Pay? Don’t Pay! by Nobel Laureate Dario Fo, using  the Joseph Farrell translation. Fo’s hilarious Marx-flavoured play about economic wars is also known as We Can’t Pay, We Won’t Pay, and its staging will recall the glory days of Canberra’s TAU Theatre, run by Domenic Mico and Tina van Raay, where audiences gathered at interval for Italian singalongs.

It will be a fitting farcical conclusion to a romp of a year for Rep.