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[title]If the upcoming 2023 STC slate seems overwhelming, perhaps it’s because of this: this is the first full season announcement since the beginning of the pandemic.
Until now, the vagaries of the Covid crisis had made forward planning a challenging prospect at best, but now STC can unveil a spectacular selection of works: 16 productions encompassing six world premieres and four new commissions. Theatremakers and writers of the caliber of Wesley Enoch, Andrew Upton, Anchuli Felicia King, Aleshea Harris, and Ella Hickson all have upcoming productions under the STC banner, attracting spectacular casts that include Sigrid Thornton, Don Hany, Zahra Newman, John Bell, Justine Clarke and – returning to the stage following a 25-year absence – Claudia Karvan. It’s going to be a bumper year for theatre fans.
It's an eclectic selection, with bold new works standing shoulder to shoulder with revered classics, and yet there are themes to be discerned. Speaking to us on the eve of the program launch, STC artistic director Kip Williams explains that while his choices in 2021 reflected themes of community in response to the lockdowns and the Covid crisis, this year a different theme has emerged.
“In this particular season I've been looking at creating a collection of plays that allow an audience to enter into a different world,” he tells us. “For a society that has largely been held in a contained space for a long time, we want to be transported. We want to go outside of ourselves. We don't want to be deeply introspective and self-regarding; we want to be moved to another place, another environment, a different universe, and a lot of the works are aimed at doing that.”
The 2023 season is indeed a far-ranging journey, taking us from the Antarctic fastness of Do Not Go Gentle to 1950s Pittsburgh in Fences, from pre-colonial Sydney in The Visitors, to the apocalyptic Melbourne of On the Beach, to the cinematic, psychotronic mindscape of Is God Is. But it also sees a return to familiar, if still challenging, territory with a new run of Williams’ own The Picture of Dorian Gray.
“We've had so many people in Sydney clamoring to see it [Dorian Gray],” he says. “People who want to see it who missed out, people who want to see it again. It's already been seen by over 125,000 people around Australia and we really wanted to bring it back to Sydney one more time as an encore farewell before it goes overseas.”
Dorian Gray also fulfills Williams’ other guiding remit: it gives audiences something they can’t get in any other medium. “Dorian is an example of a work that is specific entirely to the act of coming and watching this work and this incredible performance. These works all have extraordinary acts of performance inside them, and while there is so much that people can get from the internet and from streaming devices at the moment, but on those particular platforms you can’t see an actor do something breathtaking before you – you can't achieve that.”
Indeed, live performance is its own specific kind of magic, as this upcoming season amply demonstrates.
Photograph: STC/Daniel Boud | ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Sydney Theatre Company’s 2023 Season
Hubris and Humiliation (Jan 20-Mar 4)
Helpmann Award-winning director Dean Bryant and playwright Lewis Treston glow up Jane Austen in this fabulous farce that comes across like Muriel’s Wedding meets Kath and Kim with a dash of Priscilla and a pinch of 19th century drawing room drama. When his mother is left destitute by a dodgy suitor, young Elliott is packed off to Melbourne to find a suitably wealthy man to marry, but he faces a torrid tour of the city’s gay scene in search of true love. With Henrietta Amevor, Mathew Cooper, Roman Delo, Celia Ireland, Melissa Kahraman, Andrew McFarlane, and Ryan Panizza.
Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? (Mar 2-25)
Claudia Karvan returns to the stage after 25 years to take on one of theatre’s darkest satires opposite Don Hany. Comfortably middle class and middle-aged, Martin and Stevie lead a seemingly perfect, simple life with their teenage son, Billy. But on his 50th birthday, Martin confesses his infidelity. He’s in love with – well, it’s not another woman. Only the mind behind Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Could concoct such a blistering and confronting assault on suburban sensibilities, testing the limits of conventional morality to destruction and question the nature of taboos. Directed by Mitchell Butel.
Fences (Mar 25-May 6)
Acclaimed actor Shari Sebbens directs this Pulitzer-winning masterwork by lauded African American playwright August Wilson. Incredibly, this is the first Australian production of the play, which was recently adapted into an Oscar-winning film. Bert LaBonté and Zahra Newman reunite after sharing the stage in STC’s A Raisin in the Sun to play Troy and Rose, a hardworking Black couple in 1950s Pittsburgh. Nursing bitterness over his failed baseball career, Troy wants to improve on his position as a garbage collector but belittles his own sons for their dreams. Through this simple frame, Wilson gives us a complex allegory for the racial upheavals of the mid-20th century, and a gripping family drama.
Julia (Mar 30-May 13)
Justine Clarke is Julia Gillard, Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, in this biographical portrait from Joanna Murray-Smith and Helpmann Award-winning director Sarah Goodes. Making its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House, Julia traces the private life and public, political career of Gillard leading up to her famous Misogyny Speech of a decade past (October 9, 2012, to be precise). Using actual transcripts in combination with Murray-Smith’s dramatic sensibilities, Julia puts Gillard and the speech in their proper cultural and historical context, at a time when women’s rights are under savage attack around the globe.
Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox (Apr 19-30)
The classic children’s tale comes to life courtesy of shake & stir theatre co. Nick Skubij adapts Roald Dahl’s book for director Ross Balbuziente, telling the story of the titular woodlands creature, who keeps his wife and cubs fed by raiding the farm of grumpy trio Boggis, Bunce and Bean. When the surly farmers strike back, it’s up to Mr Fox to unite all the animals of the forest in order to win the day. Staged with a winning combination of beloved actors and animation, this is sure to delight all ages.
Do Not Go Gentle (May 23-Jun 17)
John Bell, Peter Carroll, Vanessa Downing, John Gaden, and Brigid Zengeni form up under STC associate director Paige Rattray to bring to the stage one of the great true adventure stories, Robert Scott’s final Antarctic expedition. Penned by legendary scribe Patricia Cornelius, this epic yarn of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity follows Scott and his team on their quest for the South Pole, facing freezing temperatures, howling winds, and starvation, all the while pursued by a shadowy figure barely glimpsed on the horizon. A meditation on myth, mortality and the lure of the impossible, Do Not Go Gentle promises to be one of the highlights of the season.
Photograph: STC/Rene Vaile | ‘Is God Is’
The Poison of Polygamy (Jun 8-Jul 15)
Originally published in 1910, The Poison of Polygamy by Wong Shee Ping was the first novel by a Chinese Australian author ever published in this country, and now it’s coming to the stage thanks to adapter Anchuli Felicia King and director Courtney Stewart. Set during the 19th century gold rush, we travel from Qing Dynasty China to the hardscrabble goldfields to the alleys of Melbourne’s Chinatown following the crafty Sleep-Sick as he sets off to make his fortune, conniving and charming a packed cast of colourful characters along the way. Starring Ray Chong Nee, Merlynn Tong, and Kimie Tsukakoshi, this rollicking tale is a fresh angle on Australia’s colonial history.
On the Beach (Jul 18-Aug 12)
Filmed twice, most notably by Stanley Kramer in 1957, Nevil Shute’s classic apocalyptic novel makes its theatrical debut under the direction of Kip Williams. After a nuclear war obliterates the northern hemisphere, Australia is one of the bastions of civilisation, but a radioactive cloud heading steadily southward promises inevitable death. Under this looming deadline a mixed bag of locals and US Navy refugees live out the last of their lives, until an international distress call forces a choice between duty and acceptance. Adapted by Tommy Murphy, On the Beach’s themes of isolation and mortality make it more timely now than when it was first published.
Constellations (Jul 20-Sep 2)
Winner of the 2022 Olivier Award for Best Play Revival, Nick Payne’s luxuriantly romantic hit took the West End by storm, and now it’s coming to the Wharf 1 Theatre. Directed by Ian Michael, who is making his Sydney Theatre Company debut, Constellations tells the tale of the multiversal love between beekeeper Roland and quantum physicist Maryanne, taking us through many different possible scenarios in their relationship, from bliss to heartbreak and all points in between. Devon Terrell, Catherine Van-Davies co-star in this luminous look at human connection in a chaotic and random universe.
The Importance of Being Earnest (Sep 5-Oct 14)
Oscar Wilde’s immortal comedy of manners is back once again, and the wonderful Helen Thomson (Death of a Salesman, Baz Lurhmann’s Elvis) is back in her signature role of Lady Bracknell, the acid-tongued society doyenne whose scathing observations punctuate this story of double lives, mistaken identities, and propriety. Old friends Algernon Blackwood and Jack Worthington are hellraisers in London when respectable gentlemen areat their country homes, but when love enters the mix, the challenge of keeping track of who is pretending to be who and when all becomes too much. Director Sarah Giles (No Pay? No Way!) ups the luxuriant excess and the mannered absurdity on this one, promising a fresh take on the revered classic.
Is God Is (Sep 15-Oct 21)
American playwright Aleshea Harris describes her breakout hit as drawing from “the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk” and one critic remarked “Step aside, Quentin Tarantino and MartinMcDonagh.” This should be enough to get fans of the outrageous and provocative on board the story of twins Racine and Anaia and their cross-country mission to take revenge on their father for their horrific shared childhood. Henrietta Amevor and Masego Pitso co-star for co-directors Shari Sebbens and Zindzi Okenyo (Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner), with support from Clare Chihambakwe, Cleave Williams, Darius Williams, Patrick Williams, and Grant Young in what promises to be the most electrifying production of the year.
Photograph: STC/Rene Vaile | ‘The Seagull’
The Dictionary of Lost Words (Oct 26-Dec 9)
Pip Williams’ book club perennial comes to vivid life thanks to writer Verity Laughton and director Jessica Arthur. In 1886, young Esme Nicoll is witness to the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary and collects the words discarded from the tome to create her own secret dictionary. Many of them are used by or are about women, as even language is patriarchal. From there we follow her through to the 20th century, the campaign for women’s suffrage, and the dawn of World War I. A rich, sweeping, historical epic, The Dictionary of Lost Words captivated hundreds of thousands of readers around the world, and this production promises to do the same for Sydney audiences.
Oil (Nov 4-Dec 16)
Making her STC debut, Brooke Satchwell joins Jing-Xuan Chan, Callan Colley, Charlotte Friels and Anne Tenney in Ella Hickson’s Oil. Taking us from the 19th century to the oil boom of the 1920s, the fraught 1970s, and beyond into the far future, Oil centers on the relationship between mother May and daughter Amy, with the rise of oil and the dwindling of the British Empire as its backdrop. STC associate director Paige Rattray (The Lifespan of a Fact, Blithe Spirit) stages Hickson’s allegory for the Wharf 1 Theatre’s new in-the-round stage, making the epic, intimate and promising a production that contrasts human dynamics against the seemingly inexorable sweep of history.
The Seagull (Nov 21-Dec 16)
Former STC artistic director and noted Chekhov expert Andrew Upton’s adaptation of the Russian classic springs to life under the direction of Imara Savage (Saint Joan). Sigrid Thornton returns to STC in the role of Irina Arkadina, the aging starlet at the heart of this artistic and romantic conflict. Expecting a romantic interlude in the country with her younger lover, the novelist Trigorin, Arkadina instead finds her playwright son, Konstantin, who is pining for the beautiful Nina. When sparks fly between Nina and Trigorin, crisis becomes inevitable in this rich, mordantly funny masterpiece.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Feb 8-13)
Kip Williams brings his groundbreaking “cine-theatre” creation back for 14 shows only, with Eryn Jean Norvill reprising her incredible performance as not just the titular debauched libertine, but all 26 characters in the play. Adapted by Williams from the novel by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray employs sophisticated video techniques to meld live and pre-recorded footage with on-stage performance to create an unheralded synthesis of form that is still being talked about today – and for good reason. If you missed out last time, this is the must-see production on the 2023 slate. Read our five-star review.
The Visitors (Sep 11-Oct 14)
Muruwari woman Jane Harrison’s The Visitors is a first contact story with a difference, taking us back to a day in 1788 when a group of elders from various clans gather on a scarp overlooking what will one day be known as Sydney Harbour. A number of huge ships have arrived in the harbour, and a decision must be made: will these strangers be welcomed or repulsed. Quandamooka man Wesley Enoch directs Wiradjuri actor Luke Carroll, Wiradjuri and Gamilaraay actor Beau Dean Riley Smith, and Gumbaynggirr and Wiradjuri actor Dalara Williams in this new co-production between the STC and Moogahlin Performing Arts that brings the 2020 Sydney Festival smash to the Sydney Opera House for its 50th anniversary celebration.
Explore STC's 2023 Season and ticket information at sydneytheatre.com.au/2023.