New adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller The Talented Mr Ripley and D’arcy Niland’s outback classic The Shiralee will make their world premieres as part of the Sydney Theatre Company’s 2025 season, alongside a retelling of Picnic at Hanging Rock starring Elvis actor Olivia DeJonge.
They headline the final season curated by the STC’s outgoing artistic director, Kip Williams, who announced in April that he will step down at the end of 2024 after 13 years with the company, eight of those at the helm. Having produced some of the company’s most acclaimed shows during his tenure, including his one-woman cine-theatre adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Williams will not be directing any productions in his final season, with one project moved into 2026 for scheduling reasons.
Williams’ departure falls at a challenging time for the company, with financial constraints necessitating a reduced 2025 season, down to 12 productions from the usual 15 to 16. “Post-pandemic, the company is still on its recovery journey,” he said. “Cost of living is [having] an impact on the company [as well as the] cost of materials [and] labour. It’s a pretty common narrative around the world at the moment.”
Maintaining a commitment to Australian content was important, he said, and two thirds of the season’s plays are by Australian playwrights. Leading this contingent are three world premieres: Ripley, Shiralee and the karaoke-fuelled ghost-comedy Congratulations, Get Rich! (恭喜发财, 人日快乐) by Merlynn Tong, whose play Golden Blood opens at STC this month.
The Talented Mr Ripley will be adapted by veteran playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, whose biographical play Julia, about the former prime minister Julia Gillard, returns to STC this month. Heartbreak High star Will McDonald will play the titular conman.
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Williams said Murray-Smith’s adaptation will tap into the contemporary resonances of Highsmith’s 1955 novel, in which a young conman’s obsession with a glamorous upper-class playboy turns murderous. “[Highsmith was] prophetic in thinking about the lives we lead today: how we curate ourselves through social media; this virtual world which is on some level a fantasy, and the way in which we have these unprecedented portals into the lives of the rich and the famous and the glamorous and how obsessed we are with it,” he said.
The Shiralee will be adapted by and star actor and playwright Kate Mulvany, who previously collaborated with Williams on adaptations of Ruth Park’s novels The Harp in the South and Playing Beatie Bow. Now the pair will turn their attention to the 1955 novel by Niland – Park’s husband – about a swagman who takes his young daughter on the road with him.
Mulvany, who broke through internationally in recent years playing an Nazi-hunting nun in the Amazon series Hunters, will return to the stage for the production, alongside Mystery Road star Aaron Pedersen.
Also among the Australian contingent are remounts of Dylan Van Den Berg’s tender queer comedy Whitefella Yella Tree, which premiered at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company in 2022; Tom Gleisner’s nursing home musical Bloom, which premiered at Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023; and encore seasons of Suzie Miller’s one-woman biographical play RBG: Of Many, One, and Verity Laughtan’s adaptation of Pip Williams’ bestselling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Rounding out the program are Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece Happy Days, co-directed by and starring Wentworth actor Pamela Rabe, and a “thrilling” Melbourne production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, starring Offspring’s Kat Stewart. There are also two award-winning contemporary American plays: 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog, which will bring theatre legend Nancye Hayes back to STC for the first time in two decades as a 91-year-old who unexpectedly becomes roommates with her grandson; and Circle Mirror Transformation by Pulitzer winner Annie Baker, which will see screen star Rebecca Gibney make her STC debut playing one of five strangers who come together in a community college drama class in Vermont.
“It’s a play with a lot of humour and a lot of heart, that looks at how difficult it is to be a human; how difficult it is to articulate yourself,” says Williams of the latter. “And it shows the power of performance – which we assume is the act of putting on a mask – to actually reveal the true self that exists within you.”