STC's The Present Broadway Bound

Following its sold-out, critically acclaimed engagement in Sydney, Australia last August, The Present, Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s first play, Platonov, will be presented on Broadway for a limited engagement in the early Winter of 2016.

With the Sydney Theatre Company all-Australian cast including Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh, The Present will be directed by John Crowley. Set and costume design is by Alice Babidge with lighting design by Nick Schlieper. Stefan Gregory is Sound Designer and Composer.

The Presentwill be produced on Broadway by Stuart Thompson and Sydney Theatre Company. Theatre, complete casting and an opening date for the production will be announced soon.

Variously known as Platonov, Wild Honey, Fatherlessness and The Disinherited, Anton Chekhov’s untitled 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 (Blanchett). At the center is the acerbic and witty Platonov (Roxburgh) 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, fuelled by twenty years of denial, regret and thwarted desire.

Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh are making their Broadway debuts in The Present. They previously appeared together on the New York stage in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Additionally, Cate Blanchett appeared in New York in Sydney Theatre Company’s productions of Hedda Gabler, A Streetcar Named Desireand The Maids.

Image: Richard Roxburgh and Cate Blanchett © Lisa Tomasetti