Sydney Theatre Company Season 2015
Artistic Director Andrew Upton has announced the Sydney Theatre Company’s 2015 program, featuring many of our Australia’s top performers and directors in a season which combines new Australian and international plays, fresh explorations of classics and stage adaptations of literary masterworks by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
Highlights include Geoffrey Rush and Neil Armfield’s King Lear; Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in a new adaptation of Chekhov’s first play; Hugo Weaving and Andrew Upton teaming up for more Beckett in Endgame; Robyn Nevin’s return to STC for the first time since 2010, in two roles; Susie Porter in a revival of heart-stopping thriller Death and the Maiden; and the season opening revival of Andrew Bovell’s first play After Dinner.
Artists confirmed for Andrew Upton’s seventh season (his second programmed as solo Artistic Director) at Sydney Theatre Company in 2015 include many of Australia’s top theatrical talents: Cate Blanchett, Jacqueline McKenzie, Robyn Nevin, Susie Porter, Richard Roxburgh, Geoffrey Rush, Helen Thomson, Hugo Weaving, Ursula Yovich and many more in a program boasting directors Neil Armfield, Leticia Cáceres, Richard Cottrell, John Crowley, Pamela Rabe and STC’s Andrew Upton, Sarah Goodes and Kip Williams.
Alongside classics of drama and literature by Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams and Virginia Woolf, the season features the best of new writing by playwrights Melissa Bubnic, Caryl Churchill, Kylie Coolwell, April De Angelis and Sarah Ruhl.
Andrew Upton said: “STC’s 2015 program has some great alignments, many of which have been touched on before including: Armfield, Rush and Shakespeare; Hugo Weaving and Sam Beckett; Roxburgh, Blanchett and Chekhov; Robyn Nevin and Tennessee Williams. Some of our greatest theatre artists are returning to the wonderful, fertile, creative ground to be found inside the canon for reinterpretation and reinvention.
“As I sifted through the Australian work that we had on commission and the new international work that I had on my reading list, a number of works kept coming to the fore that presented fresh angles on familiar material, like Jumpy, or that used language in ways that suggest more experimental theatrical form, like Orlando and Love and Information. This presented itself as an opportunity to set up a great juxtaposition between works of the canon that comprise half the program (nearly) and newer works with a particular emphasis on female voices that constitute the other half (almost).”
THE PRODUCTIONS
Sydney Theatre Company presents
AFTER DINNER
By Andrew Bovell
15 January to 7 March 2015, Wharf 1
Opening Night: Tuesday 20 January 2015
Andrew Bovell’s 1988 play After Dinneris rediscovered with a comedic cast playing lonely singles trying to escape their nine-to-five routines on a night out at the pub. With bouffant hair and shoulder pads, three officecolleagues, played by Helen Thomson, Anita Hegh and Rebecca Massey, are raring to go. At a table nearby are one-and-a-half potentially eligible blokes (Glenn Hazeldine and Josh McConville). But before the band has even hit the stage it’s pretty clear things are going to get messy tonight. It may be a comedy but Bovell’s first play bears the same psychological acuity that audiences have loved in his more recent plays at STC; When the Rain Stops Falling and The Secret River. Imara Savage (Machinal) directs.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER
By Tennessee Williams
9 February to 21 March 2015, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Opening Night: Friday 13 February 2015
Former Artistic Director Robyn Nevin is back at STC as the formidable Violet in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer. In the sinister hothouse garden of the late Sebastian Venable, his mother is determined to do whatever is necessary to stop her niece Catharine (ErynJean Norvill) babbling the dreadful truth of her son’s demise. The macabre, disturbing and dark portrait of moral disintegration is directed by STC Resident Director Kip Williams collaborating with designer Alice Babidge and utilising live video to expose the characters’ nightmarish secrets. Also confirmed for the cast are Susan Prior and Paula Arundell.
Sydney Theatre Company presents TheEmergencyRoom and Galway International Arts Festival in association with Cusack Projects Limited
RIVERRUN
The voice of the river in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake adapted and performed by Olwen Fouéré
10 March to 11 April 2015, Wharf 2
Opening Night: Thursday 12 March 2015
One of Ireland’s leading theatre-makers, Olwen Fouéré, was invited to STC as part of Abbey Theatre’s Terminus in 2011. Now she returns with her own show, seen this year at London’s National Theatre and in Edinburgh. In riverrun, Fouéré brings to theatrical life the final sequence of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, charting the progress of the River Liffey. The Scotsman’s five- star review reports that “for an astonishing 65 minutes, she holds the audience enthralled, as she leads us through Joyce’s glimmering vision of the life of the city as it wakes to another day, of its aspirations and follies and political posturings, then deeper and deeper into the rushing water and into something like a female life-story...”
Sydney Theatre Company and Adshel present
A Melbourne Theatre Company Production
JUMPY
By April De Angelis
26 March to 16 May 2015, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Opening Night: Saturday 28 March 2015
Jane Turner (Kath & Kim) heads the cast of Jumpy, the West End comedy by April De Angelis woven from frazzled hopes and parental anxiety. Hilary is turning 50, her marriage is failing, her job is goingnowhere and her teenage daughter is feral. To top it off, she’s coming to terms with the fact that, eventually, every liberal, former protestor and fair-minded parent finds themselves at the head of a dictatorship. Pamela Rabe, director of STC’s In the Next Room, or the vibrator play and Elling, will walk the line again between sweet comedy and poignancy at the helm of this Melbourne Theatre Company production.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
ENDGAME
By Samuel Beckett
31 March to 9 May 2015, Sydney Theatre
Opening Night: Tuesday 7 April 2015
Furthering their investigation of Samuel Beckett following STC’s Waiting for Godot in 2013, Artistic Director Andrew Upton and Hugo Weaving (in his fifth STC show in as many years) team up again. Endgame is considered by many as the richly rewarding companion piece to the great playwright’s earlier existential farce. Weaving is the monstrous Hamm, mercilessly bullying his son Clov while his old parents, Nagg and Nell (Bruce Spence and Sarah Peirse), are kept in rubbish bins from which they occasionally emerge but never escape. Yet as in Godot, despite the apocalyptic bleakness, Beckett somehow brings extraordinary comic touches and pathos to what he portrays as the great despair of a ruined world. Set and lighting design are by Nick Schlieper and Weaving is part of the creative team too, collaborating with Upton as his Associate Director.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
BOYS WILL BE BOYS
By Melissa Bubnic
16 April to 9 May 2015, Wharf 2
Opening Night: Saturday 18 April 2015
Danielle Cormack returns to STC as the power-suited Astrid Wentworth, a currency trader in the dog-eat-dog world of frenzied buying and selling. Satirising this world of men, the play is abrasive andsearing as it inverts all expectations of moral certainty.
An STC commission, Boys Will Be Boys is a smart, funny and risqué work by Melissa Bubnic, winner of STC’s 2010 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award.
Sydney Theatre Company and Allens present
BATTLE OF WATERLOO
By Kylie Coolwell
1 June to 27 June 2015, Wharf 1
Opening Night: Friday 5 June 2015
Kylie Coolwell’s debut play is a story of thwarted love. In a Waterloo apartment block, a community holds tightly together despite the pressures that bombard it daily. An exuberant cast of characters swirl through the building, blowing in great gusts of humour, pain, hope and disappointment. At the heart of this vibrant community is Cassie (Shari Sebbens), a promising young fashion designer with a great future ahead of her. But when her partner Ray (Luke Carroll) returns from a spell inside he brings with him the distracting forces of love, chaos and cops. STC Resident Director Sarah Goodes has been closely involved in the play’s development, nurturing it through early incarnations at Playwriting Australia’s Redfern Salon and STC’s Rough Draft program. Confirmed casting also includes Hunter Page- Lochard and Roxanne McDonald.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
A Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre production
LOVE AND INFORMATION
By Caryl Churchill
9 July to 15 August 2015, Wharf 1 Theatre
Opening Night: Saturday 11 July 2015
With Love and Information one of Britain’s greatest living playwrights, Caryl Churchill, explores the curse of the information age and the search for meaning in society. A dizzying kaleidoscope of more than a hundred charactersreveals different, tantalising vignettes of life. The play questions how we reconcile the daily bombardment of facts, gossip, news feeds - the blather of modern life - with our often too-fractured relationships with those around us. For STC’s co-production with Malthouse Melbourne, Resident Director Kip Williams collaborates with designer David Fleischer and a cast including Glenn Hazeldine, Anita Hegh, Zahra Newman, Alison Whyte and Ursula Yovich.
Sydney Theatre Company and UBS present
THE PRESENT
After Anton Chekhov’s Platonov
By Andrew Upton
4 August to 19 September 2015, Sydney Theatre
Opening: Saturday 8 August 2015
Variously known as Wild Honey, Fatherlessness, Play without Title and Platonov, Anton Chekhov’s first play was unknown at all until it was discovered in 1920 in a safety-deposit box 16 years after the playwright’s death. Roughly four hours of existing theatrical material revolving around Chekhovian tropes of lust, longing, vodka and shattered dreams, imbued with the familiar warmth, humour and insight, will be distilled into a new play by Andrew Upton, entitled The Present. All the drama is fuelled by near-nuclear collision of two soul mates, Mikhail Platonov (Richard Roxburgh) and Anna Petrovna (Cate Blanchett). STC welcomes Irish director John Crowley, renowned for his work on the West End and Broadway, making his Australian debut.
Sydney Theatre Company presents a
Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company production
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
By Ariel Dorfman
28 August to 10 October 2015, Wharf 1
Opening Night: Tuesday 1 September 2015
Set against the backdrop of an unnamed South American post-dictatorship state, Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden tells thestory of a woman for whom memories are a prison. Years ago, she was blindfolded and tortured for her politics. She never saw her captor but she did hear him. When her husband invites a stranger to their isolated beach house, she’s sure she knows that voice. In 1992 STC presented the Australian premiere of the play which went on to tour throughout Australia. Now for a new co-production with Melbourne Theatre Company, Leticia Cáceres directs Susie Porter and Eugene Gilfedder.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
ARMS AND THE MAN
By George Bernard Shaw
14 September to 31 October 2015, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Opening: Friday 18 September 2015
Richard Cottrell directs George Bernard Shaw’s classic Arms and the Man, collaborating with the design team of Julie Lynch and Michael Scott-Mitchell to create a sumptuous period confection. As the Serbo-Bulgarian Warof 1885 rages, the lovely Raina (Andrea Demetriades) is engaged to the gallant and posturing war hero Sergius. When a fugitive Swiss soldier, Bluntschli (Mitchell Butel), escaping the battle field, abruptly lands in her bedroom, he initially seems threatening. But he quickly reveals he’d prioritise chocolate bullets over real ones any day. Raina has no option but to fall in love. With his rapier wit, sparkling dialogue and intriguing subplots, Shaw yet again skewers the hypocrisies of the human condition while taking a dig at the romanticisation of both love and war.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
ORLANDO
From the novel by Virginia Woolf. Adapted by Sarah Ruhl.
9 November to 19 December 2015, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Opening Night: Friday 13 November 2015
In Orlando, Sarah Ruhl’s (In The Next Room, or the vibrator play) adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel about sex, love and history, the audience is taken on a journey of time travel and gender bending with Jacqueline McKenzie. This enchanting frolic through the ages tells thestory of a young man in the court of Elizabeth I with whom many fall in love, including the Queen herself. After a particularly debauched night in Constantinople, he awakes from a long slumber to discover he is now, without any doubt, a woman. She must now find her way back home. The ensuing adventure takes almost four hundred years as she tries to work out what it actually means to be a human being, grappling with the massive changes that take us from the beginning to the end of the Age of Enlightenment. STC Resident Director Sarah Goodes directs this Australian premiere.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
KING LEAR
By William Shakespeare
24 November 2015 to 9 January 2016, Sydney Theatre
Opening Night: Saturday 28 November 2015
Rising to the challenge of a role that is said to be the “Everest of classical acting”, Geoffrey Rush is back at STC for the first time since 1993 when he played opposite newcomer Cate Blanchett in David Mamet’s Oleanna.
Director Neil Armfield has been a more recent visitor when he directed STC’s unforgettable The Secret River in 2013. The long-shared history, experience and passion of these two leading Australian artists should make for a startling production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the master portrait of a man in decline confronting the perpetual battle between good and evil. In other inspired casting already confirmed for the ensemble that will surround the king, Robyn Nevin is The Fool, Mark Leonard Winter plays Edgar and Meyne Wyatt is Edmund.
SPECIAL SEASON OFFERS
Two other shows complete STC’s offerings of 2015
Sydney Theatre Company presents a
Sydney Theatre Company and Barking Gecko Theatre Company production
STORM BOY
By Colin Thiele
Adapted for the stage by Tom Holloway
24 April to 17 May 2015, Wharf 1 Theatre
Opening Night: Saturday 25 April 2015
A return season of Colin Thiele’s much-loved Storm Boy adapted by Tom Holloway - STC’s 2013 co-production with Barking Gecko Theatre Company - plays in Sydney and on a regional tour in2015. Directed by John Sheedy, the play follows Storm Boy as he roams the savage landscape of the Coorong, picking up some unlikely friends including the enigmatic Fingerbone Bill and a family of orphaned pelicans, including his favourite, Mr Percival.
Sydney Theatre Company presents
THE WHARF REVUE 2015
Written and created by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott
21 October to 19 December 2015, Wharf 1
Opening Night: Thursday 22 October 2015
The Wharf Revue returns for a 15th birthday celebration of satirical histrionics in 2015. As ever, there will be up-to-the-second sketches on whichever cultural malaise or governmental gaffe is news of the day.
But no birthday party is complete without a dose of nostalgia, so there’ll also be a parade of past indignitaries – a who’s who of 21st century embarrassments, from politicians to celebrities.
2015 Season Tickets are on sale from 9am on 9 September
To receive a 2015 season brochure call (02) 9250 1777 /
Images by James Green, except Storm Boy © Collider, Love and Information © James Green and iStock Jumoy © Bronwen Sharp and riverrun © Colm Hogan.
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