Cate Blanchett Tidies Up for New York Run of Stage Play ‘The Maids’
Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert will reprise their roles in the Sydney Theater Company production of “The Maids” as part of New York’s Lincoln Center Festival this summer.
Blanchett’s last stage outing in Gotham, the 2012 run of STC’s “Uncle Vanya,” also was part of the Lincoln Center fest and became one of the city’s must-see theater events that summer, along with a concurrent staging of “Vanya” downtown that starred Michael Shannon.
“The Maids,” the 1947 Jean Genet play translated by Benedict Andrews and Andrew Upton and helmed by Andrews, is one offering of the 2014 Lincoln Center Festival alongside the fest return of kabuki company Heisei Nakamura-za, a joint appearance of the Bolshoi Ballet, Opera, Chorus and Orchestra and dance works by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Rosas, the troupe she founded.
The fest launches with Heisei Nakamura-za’s “Kaidan Chibusa No Enoki (The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree)” (June 7-12), a revenge tale that centers on an evil samurai and the young man whose father he killed. Rosas and De Keersmaeker will perform four early works (July 8-16), while the Bolshoi Ballet and Orchestra (July 15-27) will present “Swan Lake,” “Don Quixote” and “Spartacus” and the Bolshoi Opera, Orchestra and Chorus performs “The Tsar’s Bride” (July 12-13).
“The Maids,” which also stars Elizabeth Debicki, centers on two maids (Blanchett and Huppert) who play a murderous game with each other and with their mistress (Debicki). The show bowed last year at Sydney Theater Company, of which the actress is the former co-artistic director, and the production’s American premiere in the Lincoln Center Festival runs Aug. 6-16 at New York City Center.
Already announced for the festival is Houston Grand Opera’s production Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s opera “The Passenger,” set to play the Park Avenue Armory July 10-13.
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