Porpoise Spit Comes To Sydney: STC Announces Muriel's Wedding Musical

It’s been a tough few months for Sydney Theatre Company. After securing British director Jonathan Church for its top job, taking the reins from outgoing Artistic Director Andrew Upton following his extremely successful tenure, the acclaimed theatre company were suddenly and unceremoniously dumped by Church in May. STC was left rudderless, just months before going public with its new leader’s first season.

This could have proved a costly disaster for STC. The momentum generated by Upton, and the A-list acting talented he was able to attract – including appearances by Hollywood-heavyweights like Hugo Weaving, Richard Roxburgh, Geoffrey Rush and, of course, Upton’s wife, Cate Blanchett – was always going to be tough to maintain, but the loss of Church threatened to leave the company dead in the water.

Despite this setback, it seems STC has been able to weather the storm. While 2017’s offering, unveiled this evening, isn’t as star-studded as previous years, it is an impressively well-made season, predominantly of contemporary work, with some exciting imports and one sure-fire crowd-pleaser: the world premiere of Muriel’s Wedding: The Musical, which will be written by Kate Miller-Heidke with additional songs by – you guessed it – ABBA. Veteran musical theatre director Simon Philips will bring Porpoise Spit to the stage, and given Church’s pedigree with musical theatre ­– not to mention the lengthy licencing negotiations no doubt needed to pull off such a coup – it seems likely this jewel in STC’s 2017 crown comes courtesy of the recently scarpered Brit (you’re terrible Johnathan). We've got everything crossed that Toni Collette gets involved.

Interim Artistic Director Kip Williams, Upton’s protégé, has been a savvy choice to introduce this pivotal season for the company. He offers continuity, having worked with the company for several years, as well as a comforting connection to the reassuring guidance of Upton, whose work as a playwright-adaptor will also appear on the billing next year with a new setting of Three Sisters, the latest addition to his collection of Chekhov interpretations.

STC’s 2017 starts with arguably a slight misstep. A production of Colm Tóibín controversial monologue, The Testament of Mary, starring the excellent Alison Whyte and directed by the equally excellent new Resident Director, Imara Savage, will be a superb production, but with Melbourne’s Malthouse presenting the same work with Pamela Rabe in the titular role, this STC outing may be subject to some unflattering comparisons.

The first Roslyn Packer Theatre mainstage production of 2017 offers Sydney audiences the exciting opportunity to see a recent theatrical megahit from London. Following its barnstorming debut at the Almeida Theatre in 2013, Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica – a witty, geopolitical study on the abrasive cultural stresses between the world’s only two superpowers – earned a slew of major awards, including those most prized of British theatre gongs, an Olivier and an Evening Standard Award. With Kip Williams in the directors spot for this new production, this promises to be one of the hottest theatre tickets anywhere in Australia next year.

Later in the year, another hugely successful show from UK will likely be a major box office draw. Curiously, it’s a production made by the very same producers behind Chimerica (perhaps a two for one offer?), Headlong. Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s brilliantly realised and reverently adapted setting of Orwell’s 1984, received its Australian premiere just last year at the Melbourne Festival. Now it will receive an infusion of Australian acting talent to give it a tinge of local variety.

In a similar vein to the Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2017 season, unveiled last week, comedy is a big component of STC’s upcoming selection. One of the blindingly bright lights of Australian playwriting, Nakkiah Lui, who is perhaps most widely known for her stints on the ABC’s Black Comedy, presents a new comedy of manners Black is the New White, skewering the social and racial stereotypes that indestructibly persist in Australian society. Jonathan Biggins’ Talk is a “rambunctious” exploration of the role of contemporary journalism in our sensionalism-hungry modern world. The Popular Mechanicals, is a revival of Geoffrey Rush’s 30-year-old farcical dissection of classical theatre, first staged at Belvoir in 1987. Moira Buffini’s Dinner, directed by comedic dab hand Imara Savage, is another London import from the West End.

In addition to regular favourites like the Wharf Revue, and already public co-productions, such as the MTC collaboration The Father, starring Australia’s grand high thespian, John Bell, and a Malthouse co-production of Michael Gow’s touching meditation on grief, Away, STC’s 2017 season once again proves that some of this company’s most exciting work happens on its smallest stages. As a very welcome sequel to 2015’s utterly superb production of Love and Information, Kip Williams will direct another play by visionary playwright Caryl Churchill. Cloud Nine, starring Harry Greenwood (son of Hugo Weaving), is one of the British theatre savant’s earliest masterworks, challenging conformity in many forms, whether it be sexual, biological or colonial. A revival of Griffin Theatre Company’s powerfully evocative production of Angus Cerini’s The Bleeding Tree, is another gem of a work heading to the Wharf next year.

Full details of Sydney Theatre Company's 2017 season are available now.