Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton reveal final Sydney Theatre Company season together
An elegant and ambitious year of theatre awaits the company in 2013.
The Sydney Theatre Company has announced its 2013 season, the final one from Sydney's favourite theatre couple, Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, as co-artistic directors.
It's a season of weighty productions, but one stands out for sheer fun, and that's Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with Tim Minchin and Toby Schmitz in the title roles. Minchin's been away for ages selling out stadiums and racking up successes like Matilda, and we're too charmed by Schmitz to give him leave from Sydney stages at all, so this is an exciting pairing of wits.
That other absurd duo, Vladimir and Estragon of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, will be played in 2013 by Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh, whom it was decided were destined for the parts during their turn in 2011's Uncle Vanya. They'll be joined by that play's director, Tamas Ascher, having together earned a whole year's worth of acclaim for the internationally touring production.
Cate and Andrew, meanwhile, will team up for Jean Genet's The Maids, in a new translation by Upton and director Benedict Andrews. They're embracing the Frenchness of the play, apparently, as they'll be welcoming French actor Isabelle Huppert to the stage to be a murderous sister alongside Blanchett.
Otherwise, the season is characterised by its engagement with the greats of Australian writing, featuring new plays by John Doyle and Joanna Murray-Smith as well as adaptations of Colin Thiele by Tom Holloway and of Kate Grenville by Andrew Bovell. Cult-statured Melbourne collective Sisters Grimm will inject some anarchy into proceedings with their Little Mercy (not their only show in Sydney in 2013), while the National Theatre of Great Britain's One Man, Two Guvnors, which had seven Tony nominations and one win in 2011-12, fills this year's (always must-see) international slot.
It's an elegant and ambitious 2013 on the cards at STC, a fitting mark to be left by the departing Blanchett. Upton will continue on solo for the next three-year term, so we'll see a continuity of their long-term goals for the company.
Full details of the 2013 season can be seen at the STC's website. Tickets are on sale from Friday, September 7, at 9am.
Image: Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving for Waiting for Godot. Photo by Ingvar Kenne.
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