The Australian debut of Tony award-winning Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen and a one-woman adaptation of Dracula by the acclaimed director of The Picture of Dorian Gray are among the productions lined up next year at the Sydney Theatre Company.
Zahra Newman will play every character in Dracula, an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel by STC artistic director Kip Williams. Williams is famous for his use of live camera feeds on stage to create “cine-theatre” with just one or two actors performing multiple roles.
Dracula will be the final part of what Williams calls his “gothic fiction trilogy”, after Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which featured just two actors; and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which saw actor Eryn Jean Norvill singlehandedly play 26 parts over multiple sold-out seasons in Australia. Succession actor Sarah Snook will star in the production on London’s West End in January.
Williams said he was not yet sure how many roles Newman, who is currently playing Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, will end up performing in Dracula.
“We’re doing our first read of the first draft in about three weeks time,” he said. “Obviously all of the key characters are there – Van Helsing and Lucy and Harker – but there are all these various townsfolk that need to be played too.
“One of the most remarkable things about Zahra, amidst a long list of remarkable things, is her ability to transform. Both her physical and vocal dexterity as an actor is unparalleled. So, to see her play this gamut of humanity, as well as conjuring these different iterations of this monstrous iconic figure, is going to be an incredibly thrilling night for an audience.”
Dear Evan Hansen, which will be a co-production with the Michael Cassel Group directed by Helpmann-winner Dean Bryant, follows a socially awkward high school student who is welcomed into the family of a dead boy, who mistakenly believe they were friends. The show won six Tonys on Broadway, where it starred Ben Platt in a star-making role which he carried into a 2021 film adaptation.
This will be the first original production since the musical debuted on Broadway, Williams said, after STC and Michael Cassel secured the rights to put on a fresh interpretation for Australia.
“It is an instant classic, so this is pretty thrilling,” Williams said. “And aside from the fact that it is filled with these incredible pop bangers, I hope it will bring young audiences in, many of whom will be having their first professional theatre experience. I’m really excited about that.”
Hugo Weaving and Irish actor Olwen Fouéré will appear in Thomas Bernhard’s The President, an “explosive” co-production with Dublin’s Gate Theatre that will have a half-Irish and half-Australian cast, Williams said.
Of the 15 productions lined up for the STC’s 2024 season, 11 are by Australian playwrights. These include Angus Cerini’s Into the Shimmering World, which will star Kerry Armstrong and Colin Friels as a farming couple who must contend with a once-in-a-generation drought. Muruwari playwright Jane Harrison’s 1998 play Stolen, following five members of the Stolen Generation, will be restaged by Wilman Noongar director Ian Michael. And A Fool in Love, an adaptation of Spanish playwright Lope de Vega’s comedy La dama boba, has been refreshed for modern sensibilities by Van Badham.
The acclaimed Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) production Sunday, a biographical play about the life of art collector Sunday Reed, will head to the STC, as will Griffin Theatre Company production Golden Blood 黄金血液, a thriller about two young siblings left to fend for themselves when their mother suddenly dies.
RBG: Of Many, One, a biographical play about the late US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, played by Heather Mitchell, will return for an encore season, as will Joanna Murray-Smith’s Julia, starring Justine Clarke as former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard. And No Pay? No Way!, a satire by Nobel laureate Dario Fo and adapted by Australian writer Marieke Hardy, will get a new go at the STC, after the original run in early 2020 was cut off by the Covid-19 pandemic.
STC’s full 2024 season program is available online.
