Entire STC Cast Broadway Bound in The Present

Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh will be joined by the entire original cast of The Present when Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s first play opens on Broadway. Full casting was announced overnight in the US as tickets go on sale for the limited season, commencing previews at the Barrymore Theatre on 17 December 2016, opening on 8 January and closing on 19 March 2017.

John Crowley’s production features Anna Bamford (Maria), Cate Blanchett (Anna), Andrew Buchanan (Osip), David Downer (Yegor), Eamon Farren (Kirill), Martin Jacobs (Alexei), Brandon McClelland (Dimitri), Jacqueline McKenzie (Sophia), Marshall Napier (Ivan), Susan Prior (Sasha), Richard Roxburgh (Platonov), Chris Ryan (Sergei) and Toby Schmitz (Nikolai).

Set and costume design is by Alice Babidge, with lighting design by Nick Schlieper. Stefan Gregory is composer & sound designer for The Present, which had its premiere season at Roslyn Packer Theatre in 2015, seen by almost 45,000 people.

Variously known as Platonov, Wild Honey, Fatherlessness and The Disinherited, Anton Chekhov’s first play was not discovered until 1920, some 16 years after the playwright’s death.  Andrew Upton’s adaptation is set post-Perestroika in the mid-1990s at an old country house where friends gather to celebrate the birthday of the independent but compromised widow Anna Petrovna.  At the centre is the acerbic and witty Platonov with his wife, his former students and friends and their partners.  They may appear comfortable, but boiling away inside is a mess of unfinished, unresolved relationships, fueled by twenty years of denial, regret and thwarted desire.

The Present is produced on Broadway by Stuart Thompson and Sydney Theatre Company.

Images: Toby Schmitz, Richard Roxburgh and Chris Ryan, & Susan Prior, Richard Roxburgh, Cate Blanchett and Martin Jacobs. Photographer: © Lisa Tomasetti