Sydney Theatre Company leans on TV star power in big season reveal

Logies Hall of Fame inductee Rebecca Gibney will make her Sydney Theatre Company debut next year as artistic director Kip Williams announced a farewell season packed with television star power.

Weeks before he steps down from the flagship company, Williams has unveiled a cut-down program of 12 plays for 2025 (compared with 15 this year). Eight are by Australian writers, including new adaptations of some beloved literary classics.

Rebecca Gibney will make her STC stage debut in 2025.Credit: Getty Images for TV WEEK Logie Awards

Williams has recruited a “collection of national treasures” and young talent to headline his final season, including Gibney (Packed to the Rafters), Kate Mulvany (Hunters), Pamela Rabe (Wentworth), Aaron Pedersen (Mystery Road), Nancye Hayes (Mary Poppins) and Will McDonald (Heartbreak High).

“I think the task of an artistic director is a never-ending act of arm-twisting,” Williams said of the roster of stars. “It’s almost like playing this weird combination of a cryptic crossword, Sudoku and Jenga when putting a season together. There’s so many moving parts.”

The 2025 season opens in February with Nancye Hayes returning to STC for the first time in two decades to perform in 4000 Miles, a dramatic comedy by American Amy Herzog about a recently reunited grandmother and grandson.

It’s followed by an adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s Gothic thriller Picnic at Hanging Rock, to star Olivia de Jonge, best known as Priscilla in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis.

McDonald will bring to life the titular character in a new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, written by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Sarah Goodes, the team responsible for stage hits Julia and Switzerland.

In July, Gibney makes her STC debut in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Circle Mirror Transformation, playing a drama teacher conducting amateur acting classes in a local community centre.

“Rebecca has this prolific screen career, and to lure someone to the stage after such success it has to be the right project,” Williams said. “There’s something about the incredible portraiture of human life that exists inside Annie Baker’s writing that is incredibly appealing for actors, and synchs perfectly with the truth that Rebecca accesses in all her performances.”

Williams, a protege of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, leaves STC after 13 years next month for Broadway and other adventures, following the runaway international success of The Picture of Dorian Gray in London.

Mitchell Butel, of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, has been named Williams’ successor.

Kip Williams on his final season: “”I think the task of an artistic director is a never-ending act of arm twisting.”Credit: James Brickwood

“I have a number of other projects I’m working on that are going to keep me busy – a film project I’m working on, a TV project and a couple of other stage things,” Williams says. “I’m feeling nostalgic and, to be honest, a little in denial.”

STC has cut this year’s season to 12 shows in 2025 as a cost-saving measure. The company is still reeling from consumer belt-tightening and a donor boycott triggered by a pro-Palestinian protest by three actors in November 2023, which is estimated to have cost it more than $1 million.

The company posted an operating deficit of $1.53 million in 2023 but is bracing for bigger deficits this year despite box-office successes. Two previous hits, RBG: Of Many, One and The Dictionary of Lost Words, are returning in 2025.

In diving deep into the literary canon, Williams has aimed for broad appeal while cultivating new Australian writing talent.

His long-time collaborator, the scriptwriter and actress Kate Mulvany, will adapt Darcy Niland’s The Shiralee, the story of a swagman and his young daughter travelling the Australian outback. After a 16-year absence from the stage, Mulvany also takes on the role of Marge.

Mulvany said The Shiralee was a fitting bookend to a body of stage work including Harp in the South and Playing Beattie Bow that had begun in 2015 when she shared a tiny office space with Williams at The Wharf as the company’s new resident director.

“It’s a very character-driven story, about a little girl challenging male toxicity in the 1960s,” she said. “I plan to turn the perspective to her and see what it is to walk through the world with such violence. The character of Buster is so wily and wise and sassy.”

Speaking from Los Angeles, Mulvany said there was a palpable international buzz about Williams since Dorian Gray’s West End debut. “He’s got the whole world in his hands and they are just waiting for him,” she said.

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