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[title]Kip Williams, artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company (STC), clearly recalls his hopeful prophecy while ringing in New Year’s Eve 2019 with friends. “I said to them, ‘2020 is the year where things get easy.’ So I basically brought this upon the world. I’ve learned, since then, to anticipate the worst, and then you can’t be disappointed.”
He’s only half-joking. The last 18 months have been horrendous for the performing arts, with theatres plunged into darkness for months on end. But he’s cautiously optimistic with not one, but two major shows set to close out this year in Shakespearean drama Julius Caesar and Great American Play™ Death of a Salesman. The first act of next year’s program is just as exciting, and looking at NSW’s incredible vaccination rates, things might even be a bit easier.
“It’s extraordinary, and it gives me so much confidence we’ll be able to continue to do our work,” he says. “For the live performance sector, it takes us out of being in an ongoing existential crisis and allows us to get back to doing what we do best, which is making theatre and telling stories. So I’m actually boldly optimistic despite my previous hubris.”
From the STC debut of international drag sensation Courtney Act, to the return of the trippy interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray that got audiences talking, here is what to expect in the jam-packed first half of 2022.
Sydney Theatre Company: Act 1 for 2022 Season
Triple X (Jan 7-Feb 26)
Bounced from both the 2020 and 2021 seasons by the Great Indoors, it’s third time lucky (fingers crossed) for this game-changing romance penned by two-time Griffin Award-winning playwright, comedian and transgender woman Glace Chase. Also starring Josh McConville (Cloud Nine), they play an about-to-get-married Wall Street banker and a queer club performer who find themselves inextricably drawn to one another. It gets complicated. Directed by Paige Rattray, the Queensland Theatre co-production has already enjoyed five-star reviews.
“It’s a show that we have developed inside the company through our Rough Draft programme, and I remember hearing it read for the first time and thinking, ‘this is going to be one of the great Australian plays’,” Williams says. “For its extraordinary craft, the radical ground-breaking nature of what it’s about, and also because it is so deeply profound in what it says about love and the choices we make in our life.”
Wudjang: Not the Past (Jan 14-Feb 12)
Remarkably, this epic yet intimately personal story of a Yugambeh man reconnecting with his ancestors is the first co-production between STC and world-renowned First Nations company Bangarra Dance Theatre. Directed and choreographed by Bangarra’s artistic director Stephen Page, he co-wrote it with Barbara and the Camp Dogs playwright Alana Valentine, who also worked on the game-changing Bennelong. Revered actors Elaine Crombie (The 7 Stages of Grieving) and Trevor Jamieson (Storm Boy) star alongside Bangarra’s dancers.
“Stephen directed Bloodland for the company in 2011, but it wasn’t with Bangarra, so for the companies to partner in this way, especially given that we’re upstairs and downstairs neighbours, it’s phenomenal,” Williams says. “We’ve been talking about him coming in for five years now and he wanted to find the right story. He’s been exploring integrating text more in his work and this is built around 19 poems that he and Alana Valentine have written. I’m thrilled.”
Photograph: STC/Daniel Boud
Grand Horizons (Feb 17-Mar 5)
Titans of theatre John Bell and Linda Cropper return to the stage together in this encore run for the deft family drama our reviewer awarded a rarer five stars. As helmed by STC’s resident director Jessica Arthur (Home, I’m Darling) with an Aussie spin on American playwright Bess Wohl’s text, the actors play a couple 50 years married who decide to call it quits, much to the disbelieving consternation of their adult kids.
“I was so thrilled to see audiences of all generations take something away from it,” Williams says of the cut-short run earlier this year. “It’s such a work of intergenerational insight, which is so genius, and to see that reflected in the audience’s response has been amazing. A lot of that is down to the phenomenal cast, but also Jess is just such a gun director, and she did an amazing job.”
White Pearl (Mar 11-Apr 23)
Anchuli Felicia King’s blistering satire about the fallout when a racist ad for skin-whitening cream plunges a cosmetics company into crisis mode spears bad corporate behaviour. Derailed from its STC run, our reviewer gave this co-pro with the National Theatre of Parramatta four stars when it played there, as directed by Priscilla Jackman.
“Felicia has since become a resident artist at the company as our Patrick White fellow, and it actually broke attendance records out at the Riverside Theatres,” Williams says. “It explores the fascinating world of skincare and the beauty industry, and particularly the impacts of intra-Asian racism and relations. It’s fascinating in that regard, and it's also so funny and brilliantly plotted. A firecracker, that one.”
Blithe Spirit (Mar 21-May 14)
Superstar drag queen Courtney Act takes on the lead role of the late but not exactly absent Elvira. The first wife of novelist Charles (Matt Day, The Deep Blue Sea), he contacts her from beyond the veil via a séance, hoping to get new material for his next book. It’s safe to say that the supernatural ritual doesn’t go exactly according to plan, disrupting his relatively recent second marriage to hilarious effect in this much-loved farce penned by Noël Coward.
“It’s such an iconic work, and Noël was one of the great writers of the theatrical canon, and one of the great writers of camp as well,” Williams says. “Director Paige Rattray has such vision for the work, and when she came to me with the idea of casting Courtney, l said, ‘That’s inspired, but you should meet with her and have a conversation’. They read the play together over Zoom and I’ve never seen Paige more excited. It’s gonna be a total treat after the year and a half we’ve had.”
Photograph: STC/Daniel Boud
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Mar 28-May 7)
And in another spooky turn for STC, the first act of 2022 comes to a head with the postponed encore of Eryn Jean Norvill’s show-stopping turn as all 26 characters in Williams’ celebrated adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s gothic classic and only novel. Our reviewer raved about her game-changing interaction with digital projections of herself as the wild hedonist of the title. He does a deal with the devil to ensure that a portrait painted of him by an infatuated artist withers instead of his narcissistic self. What could possibly go wrong?
“I’m so delighted that it’s back,” Williams says. “When we were planning on bringing it back this year, it sold faster than any show has in years, so we know the appetite is there for audiences. And at the centre of the production is EJ and this extraordinary performance that she creates night in, night out. This is something that you can’t even fathom, really, what she pulls off. If I can be indulgent enough to say, collaborating with EJ and the creative team on this show for me has been one of the absolute highlights of my life.”