The Matrix actor, who recently played Macbeth to great acclaim on the Sydney stage, will reprise his role as Vladimir opposite original co-stars Richard Roxburgh as Estragon, Philip Quast as Pozzo and Luke Mullins as Lucky.
Almost 35,000 people watched the Sydney production, which saw Roxburgh and Mullins named best actor and best supporting actor respectively at the 2014 Helpmann awards, Australia’s answer to the Oliviers.
It is not the first time Sydney Theatre Company has been bound for the Barbican. In 2012, Cate Blanchett led the cast of Botho Strauss’s Gross und Klein, directed by fellow Australian Benedict Andrews, whose sell-out A Streetcar Named Desire is about to finish its run at the Young Vic. The company’s artistic director, Andrew Upton, who is married to Blanchett, will direct Waiting for Godot.
Upton’s 2015 Sydney programme sees him reunite with Weaving for more Beckett in a production of Endgame, while Blanchett and Roxburgh will star in The Present, Upton’s new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s first play, Platonov. The repertoire, alongside that of Australia’s other major theatres, has come under fire for being “very cosy and white”.
It may be Upton’s penultimate programme for Sydney Theatre Company, as his current contract expires at the end of 2015. “What I will say for sure is that I wouldn’t do another three-year contract,” he recently told Guardian Australia.
