The defining Sydney Theatre Company productions of the last decade
Sydney Theatre Company has had — by some distance — the most internationally noticed creative decade of any Australian theatre company. Between 2015 and 2025 the company shipped four productions that transferred to the West End or Broadway, three productions that toured internationally to multiple cities, and a sustained domestic mainstage programme that established the Roslyn Packer Theatre as the closest thing Australia has to a National Theatre house.
Here are the productions David has been pointing first-time STC visitors at when they ask which back-catalogue work to read up on before a Wharf-precinct visit.
The Kip Williams international transfers (2018–2024)
Kip Williams’s tenure as artistic director from 2017 to 2024 produced the most internationally noticed body of work any Australian artistic director has shipped in the past two decades. The signature productions all paired live cinematography with a single performer or small ensemble — the technical achievement of which became part of the work’s identity.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (2020 Sydney premiere; West End 2024; Broadway 2024). Eryn Jean Norvill performing twenty-six characters under twenty-six live cameras. The most ambitious single-performer production in Australian theatre history and the most internationally toured.
- Cyrano (2024 Sydney; West End transfer in development). The follow-up production, paired with Williams’s signature live-camera approach.
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2022). The development that established the live-cinematography approach as a sustained Williams aesthetic line rather than a one-off experiment.
The Cate Blanchett productions (2009–2023)
Cate Blanchett’s STC creative leadership and recurring performance work — most concentrated during her 2008–2013 co-artistic directorship with Andrew Upton, but continuing through to her recent The Present Australian and Broadway runs — produced some of the most internationally noticed Australian theatre productions of the period.
- A Streetcar Named Desire (2009 Sydney, 2009 Brooklyn Academy of Music). The production that established the modern Sydney Theatre Company international touring programme.
- The Maids (2013, with Isabelle Huppert). The international co-production that introduced the contemporary New York theatre audience to the Sydney company.
- The Present (2015 Sydney; 2017 Broadway). The Andrew Upton adaptation of Chekhov’s Platonov, with Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh and a substantial Sydney company cast. The Broadway transfer in 2017 was Blanchett’s Broadway debut.
The contemporary Australian playwriting line
The company’s strongest and most consistent thread under both the Blanchett-Upton and the Williams artistic directorships was the contemporary Australian playwriting. The defining productions:
- The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell (2016). Indigenous reimagining of the Henry Lawson story, originated at Belvoir but the STC co-production cemented its national reputation.
- Counting and Cracking by S. Shakthidharan (2019). The Sri Lankan-Australian family epic that toured internationally to Edinburgh and Birmingham.
- Prima Facie by Suzie Miller (2019). The one-woman play with Sheridan Harbridge that subsequently transferred to the West End with Jodie Comer (winning the 2023 Olivier for Best New Play).
What we’d recommend reading first
For first-time STC audiences who want to read into the company’s back catalogue, David’s recommendation order is: the production text of Prima Facie first (it’s the production that made the most cultural impact internationally and reads compellingly on the page), then Counting and Cracking (for the scale of the company’s ambition), then any of the Williams-Norvill productions in the available filmed-recording form. The Kip Williams productions are the closest STC has come to producing a body of work that is genuinely studied internationally.
