Some actors disappear into a role. Peter Goers, by his own cheerful admission, does not. “Whatever role I play, people see me,” he says, and in the case of Sheridan Whiteside, the acid-tongued tyrant at the centre of The Man Who Came to Dinner, that may be truer than usual.
Goers takes on Whiteside when The Adelaide Repertory Theatre opens its 2026 season at the Arts Theatre on Angas Street, running 9 to 18 July. It’s the first of three in-house productions for The Rep this year, followed by The Sunshine Boys in September and The Drowsy Chaperone in November, and the company is billing it as its boldest season to date. Directed by Sue Wylie, the production assembles an enormous cast of Adelaide’s most recognisable stage names, with Goers joined by the likes of Michael Griffiths, Brenton Whittle, Helen Geoffreys and Penni Hamilton-Smith.
A glorious monster
First staged on Broadway in 1939, The Man Who Came to Dinner is a Kaufman and Hart classic built around one of the great comic creations: Sheridan Whiteside, a celebrated radio personality who slips on the ice outside a respectable home, can’t be moved, and proceeds to take the place over, insulting his hosts, monopolising the household and refusing, gloriously, to leave.
Ask Goers what the appeal is of playing someone that gloriously badly behaved, and he doesn’t reach for anything complicated. “[It’s] exhausting and thrilling,” he says. “Just like being at home with friends!”
It’s a play that has kept audiences laughing for the better part of a century, and Goers has no doubt about why it earns the season-opening slot. “It is a great and classic comedy with a huge, marvellous cast and, most importantly, a great part for me!!!”
The character was famously modelled on Alexander Woollcott, the sharp-tongued American critic and broadcaster — a cultural personality with no shortage of opinions. Goers, a broadcaster and critic himself, knows that world from the inside, and the parallel is not lost on him. “Don’t ask!” he says. “Very close to home!!!”
In fact, he sees a genuine kinship with Whiteside that goes beyond the job description. “This part is close to me. Like me, Sheridan Whiteside mainly insults people he likes.” If audiences are looking for the “holiday from oneself” that Goers has described in the past, this isn’t quite it, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He points to last year’s turn in Harvey, where, as he puts it, he played “a charming, beatific 45-year-old alcoholic whose best friend was a six-foot-tall white rabbit visible only to him,” and still, “people said ‘oh, he’s just like you’!!!!”
Joyous, hilarious, hard yakka
If there’s a through-line in everything Goers says about this production, it’s the cast. On the subject of his fellow cast members, Goers is unequivocal about the “pure joy” of performing alongside them: “I’m honoured to be sharing a stage with so many actors I love and admire.”
That spirit has carried into rehearsals, which he sums up in three words: “Joyous. Hilarious. Hard yakka.” It’s a reminder that for all his one-liners, Goers takes the work seriously — theatre, as he’s long maintained, thrives on the people you make it with.
The ghosts of The Rep
Goers reserves his deepest affection for The Rep itself. Founded in 1908, The Adelaide Repertory Theatre is the oldest continuously surviving amateur theatre company in the Southern Hemisphere and Australia’s longest continuously performing non-professional company, a lineage Goers feels keenly, and rates even more grandly. “It is indivisible from Adelaide and has been since 1908,” he says. “The Adelaide Repertory Theatre, from my research, seems to be THE LONGEST CONTINUOUSLY RUNNING theatre company in the western world. I’ve admired it forever and known and loved so many creatives who’ve worked there and I’m surrounded by their, hopefully encouraging, ghosts.”
It’s a fitting image for a company with this much history, and for an actor who clearly feels he’s treading boards that matter.
The honest truth about house guests
Whiteside is, of course, the house guest from hell, the man who arrives, takes over and won’t go home. Asked whether he’s ever been that guest himself, Goers offers a flicker of denial before folding completely. “Well, no, except for…… I’m lying… I’m an appalling house guest.”
It’s the kind of answer that explains exactly why he’s right for this part.
Quick-fire with Peter Goers
The role you’d still love to play: Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest
A performance you’ve seen recently that stayed with you: Teddy Dunn in the title role in The Importance of Being Earnest
Your idea of the perfect night at the theatre: Any good play, well played
The Adelaide institution you’d defend to the death: The Ancient Egyptian Room at the SA Museum. “The Art Deco lino is from 1938 and it’s as good today as the day it was first laid. Which of us could say that?!”
The Man Who Came to Dinner plays at the Arts Theatre, Angas Street, from 9 to 18 July 2026. Tickets are $35 (general admission) and $32 (concession), with a $1 seat levy from every ticket going to the Arts Theatre redevelopment fund.
To book:
