Sydney Theatre Company 2012 Season
Sydney Theatre Company's 2012 Main Stage Season of 11 plays, four new Australian plays including the premieres of plays by Hilary Bell, Jonathan Biggins Tim Winton, along with two new Australian adaptations, was announced by Artistic Directors Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett on September 23.
The Productions
Never Did Me Any Harm devised by Force Majeure
Director: Kate Champion
With Kristina Chan, Vincent Crowley, Marta Dusseldorp, Alan Flower, Sarah Jayne Howard, Kirstie McCracken, Heather Mitchell and Josh Mu.
Sydney Theatre Company and Force Majeure’s new dance- theatre work exploring issues associated with raising children, presented as part of Sydney Festival. Drawing inspiration from Christos Tsiolkas’ best-selling novel The Slap, director and choreographer Kate Champion has conducted interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds to garner their views on the subject of parenting. In a familiar, yet disconcertingly Lynchian, Aussie backyard, seven actors and dancers including create familiar characters by fusing movement with verbatim text.
From 6 Jan – 12 Feb 2012
Wharf 1 Theatre.
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Director: Peter Evans.
With Jessica Marais, Kim Gyngell, Wendy Hughes, Deborah Kennedy, Vanessa Downing and David Woods.
When a young flower seller glimpses an opportunity to elevate herself in society she boldly snatches at it, naïve to the potential costs. Peter Evans’ new production blows away the clichés sometimes associated with the brutal and hilarious play that has inspired interpretations as diverse as My Fair Lady, Educating Rita and the eighties’ Hollywood film Pretty Woman. Robert Cousins is back to design the set.
From 31 Jan - 3 March 2012
Sydney Theatre.
Midsummer (A Play With Songs) by David Greig & Gordon McIntyre
Director: David Grieg
With Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon
Ajoyous rom-com with a touch of the tartan by playwright David Greig and Gordon McIntyre of indie folk-rock group Ballboy. Lawyer Helena and petty criminal Bob are thrown together in dubious circumstances, sharing a drunken one-night-stand. So begins an extraordinary lost weekend of bridge burning, car chases, wedding bust-ups, Japanese rope-bondage gone wrong and self-loathing hangovers. The original production from Edinburgh’s renowned Traverse Theatre.From 1 Feb – 10 March 2012
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton
From the novel by Choderlos De Laclos
Director: Sam Strong
With Pamela Rabe, Hugo Weaving, Jane Harders, Heather Mitchell and Justine Clarke.
The deliciously deviant Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont plot an elaborate salon amusement of seduction and humiliation that soon escalates into a brutal battle of guile, deceit and treachery.
From 31 March – 10 June 2012
Wharf 1 Theatre
Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Director: Andrew Upton.
With Jack Thompson, Drew Forsythe, Sandy Gore and Helen Thomson.
In Dylan Thomas’ beautifully poetic radio-turned-stage-play, Under Milk Wood, the audience is beckoned into the small Welsh town of Llareggub, through streets, houses, bedrooms and on into the townspeople’s dreams. This literary classic is a warming celebration of humanity that also casts a cool eye on failed relationships, thwarted lives and the oppressive clutter of small town existence.
From 22 May – 7 July 2012
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
The Histrionic by Thomas Bernhard. Translated by Tom Wright
Director: Daniel Schlusser
With Bille Brown, Bsrry Otto, Josh Price, Jennifer Vuletic and Edwina Wren.
The highly strung Bruscon, a once-feted star of the stage, has taken a spectacular fall from grace and is now reduced to playing in a backwater Austrian town. The charismatic showman remains determined however that he will present his greatest work. But first he must rant, cajole and exhaust himself while bullying his own children, belittling his wife, snidely haranguing his hosts and wallowing in self-pity - all the while railing against provincialism, national failure, the vapidity of the young, the venality of the old, the tyranny of the past, the banality of the present, and on and on ... Rarely performed outside Europe, the play is by revered Austrian playwright, Thomas Bernhard, adapted by STC Associate Director Tom Wright and directed by Daniel Schlusser.
From 15 June – 28 July 2012
Wharf 1 Theatre
Face To Face – A filmby Ingmar Bergman, adapted for the stage by Andrew Upton and Simon Stone
Director: Simon Stone
With Kerry Fox, John Gaden and Wendy Hughes.
Jenny, an intelligent, successful psychiatrist, finds that she is unable to help herself when she becomes plagued by terrifying, vivid dreams. After a shocking event she is shaken to the core by the realisation that she is incapable of feeling anything and must make a journey to very edge of sanity.
From 7 August – 8 Sept 2012
Sydney Theatre
The Splinter by Hilary Bell
Director: Sarah Goodes.
With Lucia Mastrantone, Erik Thomson and Helen Thomson.
In the world premiere production of Hilary Bell’s The Splinter, a husband and wife struggle to re-connect with their child when she inexplicably returns after a nine-month disappearance. Inspired by the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw, the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Snow Queen and real life stories of abducted children, Bell’s play is an emotional thriller about all consuming obsession, grief and identity.
From 10 Aug - 15 Sept 2012
Wharf 1 Theatre
Australia Day by Jonathan Biggins
Director: Richard Cottrell
With Valrie Bader, David James, Geoff Morrell and Alison Whyte.
Australia Dayis Jonathan Biggins’ wickedly funny new play inspired by his own experiences as an Australia Day ambassador. In the fictional small country town of Coriole, members of the Australia Day committee comprising an ambitious Liberal Mayor, a Greens Councillor, a bigoted builder, an Australian-born Vietnamese school teacher and a member of the CWA, learn that orchestrating celebrations of national pride was never going to be easy
From 7 Sept – 27 Oct 2012.
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Sex With Strangers by Laura Eason
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
With Ryan Corr and Jacqueline McKenzie
A tender, sharply observed love story which premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre earlier in 2011. Olivia is a typically literary type: bookish, private and deeply disinterested in technology. Ethan is a Gen Y blogger who has topped the New York Times Best Seller list with his conquest by conquest chronicle of a year on the singles scene. Strangely, they instantly click, but it’s not long before their online lives threaten to destroy their real-life connection.
From 25 Sep– 24 Nov 2012.
Wharf 1 Theatre
Signs of Life by Tim Winton
A co-production with Black Swan Theatre Company
With Gretta Scacchi, George Shevtsov and Pauline Whyman.
Director: Kate Cherry.
Bereaved widow Georgie, living on an isolated farm parched by a drought of apocalyptic severity, is visited by two mysterious Indigenous siblings, Mona and Bender. All three have contending claims on the place and on their memories. With gentle echoes of the extraordinary novel Dirt Music, the play by one of Australia’s most popular living writers is a work of magical realism exploring grief, yearning, loss and redemption.
From 2 Nov – 22 Dec 2012
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
**
In addition to its mainstage season, the STC will present perennial favourite, The Wharf Revue, and three other special offerings.
The STC's Residents will collaborate with Belgian theatremakers Ontroerend Goed on A History of Everything,the David Farr (Matamorphosis, 2009) directed Water, and from the UK, an all-male The Pirates of Penzance, directed by Sasha Regan.
Image: Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, Artistic Directors, ahead of the launch of STC’s 2012 Main Stage Season. Photographer: Grant Spakes-Carroll.
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Other 2012 Seasons
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