Overview
The Sydney Theatre Company has revealed a 2014 program that cements its reputation as the home of new and canonical playwriting. At the same time, it's also arguably the most experimental of seasons around, incorporating global theatre trends that look at interactivity and staging shows in unusual spaces.
The centrepiece of the program is a Macbeth as you've never seen it. Starring Hugo Weaving and directed by Kip Williams, the production takes place in the auditorium of the cavernous Sydney Theatre, with the (small) audience sitting on the stage. More than a half-baked scheme, this reconfiguration paves the way for all kinds of unique imagery that flips the familiar on its head.
Earlier in the year is Fight Night, from regular Belgian visitors Ontroerend Goed (A History of Everything) and Adelaide's The Border Project. The show plays out as something of a competition for votes, the progress of which is controlled by the audience via handheld devices. As well as exploring the audience-performer relationship, it aims to reflect on the flaws and manipulations of the democratic system.
Other works in the season are in the more traditional, you-sit-there, we-act-here vein of theatre, but many are thrilling all the same. There are two compelling devised works on the menu: Calpurnia Descending comes from the incomparable Sisters Grimm (Little Mercy), who have roped in Paul Capsis for their own spin on the All About Eve film trope of manipulative female proteges. The Long Way Home, meanwhile, looks to be a powerful collaboration between members of the Australian Defence Force and the playwright Daniel Keene. In a project instigated by ADF Chief David Hurley, actors and servicemen will perform a piece of verbatim theatre reflecting on their experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor.
Richard Roxburgh pops up at the end of the year in Cyrano de Bergerac, a role which STC artistic director Andrew Upton describes him as being "born to play", not because he's as famously ugly as the poetically gifted romantic (that may require prostheses), but because he has the rare quality of being both "a leading man and a clown".
Other classics of various eras include Mojo, a rowdy, '50s London-set, testosterone-drenched play by Jez Butterworth that's sometimes said to be the 'inspiration' for Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. There's also farce Noises Off; Maxim Gorky's drama Children of the Sun, in an adaptation by Upton first performed at London's National Theatre; and a steadfast David Williamson, Travelling North, starring Baby Boomer favourites Bryan Brown and Greta Scacchi.
New Australian writing comes in the form of Lachlan Philpott's fun M.Rock, based on the true story of elderly nightclub DJ Mamy Rock; Sue Smith's Kryptonite, a rich political drama that comes down to personal missed connections; and Joanna Murray-Smith's Switzerland, an unexpectedly Hitchockian thriller.
Recent international writing is represented by The Effect, another socially conscious play from Lucy Prebble, writer of Enron, this time with a medical spin, and the highfalutin Perplex from German Marius von Mayenburg, a self-reflexive piece of theatre about a couple who return from holiday to find their housesitters have taken over their lives.
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