Weaving's second chance at seducing the audience

French connection ... Hugo Weaving and Angela Punch-McGregor in Nimrod's 1987 production.

Elissa Blake, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

A role as meaty as the arch seducer Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses doesn't come up often. When it does, you grab it.

Hugo Weaving considers himself fortunate to have performed it once, in Richard Cottrell's production for Nimrod Theatre in 1987 at the Seymour Centre. To get a second crack is lucky indeed. The only problem, Weaving says, is you don't get to choose when you play it.

"I was much too young, really, first time around," Weaving says. "I was 27. Now I feel like I'm too old."

Weaving, 51, imagines Valmont to be about 40. "Over the hill," he says, a mite ruefully. "But back then, I was just too young to feel like a man who's become bored with himself. He feels there must be something more to life. At 27, I could understand that intellectually but I couldn't feel like that."

Revisiting the role in the Sydney Theatre Company's new production, Weaving recognises Valmont as a man who has arrived at a point where he knows something must change.

"He probably - unconsciously - would like to be in love with someone and just settle down and live in the country. But he would never admit that," he says. "He would hate to lose his reputation as the great seducer, the great lover of all women, and so he's in a bind."

For the company's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which opens on Thursday, the director Sam Strong has worked on a contemporary feel. It's not set in 1782, when Choderlos de Laclos wrote the original novel, or in an identifiable present, Weaving says. "It's a timeless now, if you like, though you get a sense of elegance and wealth - European wealth, old money, I suppose - in the set and costumes."

One of the challenges in rehearsal has been addressing the tone of Christopher Hampton's script.

"The way in which Valmont seduces in 1782 and the way he would do it now, has to be very different," Weaving says.

"You have to play it less front-on. I don't think the passionate professions of love that Hampton's written - like 'falling to his knees and grasping her hand and kissing her hand', which puts you into corset land a bit - can work today. There are at least three women in the play he's seducing and they all require a different sort of energy and a different sort of attack."

Les Liaisons Dangereuses opened at Wharf 1 on Thursday.

Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton to quit Sydney Theatre Company leading role in 2013

Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett during the launch of the Sydney Theatre Company 2012 season. Picture: Alan Pryke Source: The Australian

Matthew Westwood, The Australian, reports

CATE Blanchett and Andrew Upton are to step down as artistic directors of Sydney Theatre Company at the end of next year.

STC general manager Patrick McIntyre last night confirmed to The Australian that the company has engaged a recruitment firm to appoint a new artistic leadership.

The pair have been joint directors of the company since 2008, when they succeeded Robyn Nevin.

Rumours of their intended departure gained momentum this week amid a report that Blanchett may star as Cleopatra opposite Richard Roxburgh in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

STC said British director Declan Donnellan had conducted workshops with company actors last week. A spokesman said that Antony and Cleopatra was one project being considered.

Blanchett has brought undeniable lustre to STC productions she appeared in, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya and The War of the Roses. Upton has written original plays and adaptations for the company, including an acclaimed Uncle Vanya.

The pair have revitalised the Wharf Theatre and are making it an environmentally sustainable building.

Unlike in previous years, Blanchett is not appearing on the Sydney stage this year. She will appear with the company in Uncle Vanya in New York and in a European tour of Gross Und Klein.

The pair's contract as co-artistic directors is through to 2013.

Curious case of Cate's falling star

Andrew Taylor, The Age, reports

TAXES, death and a star performance by Cate Blanchett are often seen as three of life's certainties.

Blanchett's latest stage role as Lotte in the Sydney Theatre Company production of Gross und Klein has won praise from theatre critics.

But recent film roles such as her murderous CIA agent, Marissa, in Hanna, which opened this year's Sydney Film Festival, have not been universally applauded.

''I must say it's the first time I've seen Cate on screen where I thought she was over the top,'' said At the Movies co-host David Stratton in a review of Hanna in July. ''It just wasn't a strong performance.''

The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Byrnes was not impressed with either the film or Blanchett's portrayal of ''another ice-cold modern witch - the kind of cartoonish character for which she has an inexplicable fondness''.

''This one's from the American south, although Blanchett's accent wanders widely over the map.''

Hanna is one of a growing list of underwhelming Blanchett movies.

''Cate Blanchett's talent has never been in doubt but it is true that recent film roles have not had the critical acclaim of earlier ones,'' Louise Keller, deputy editor of Urban Cinefile and Sun-Herald film critic, said. ''Perhaps the fact that the highly anticipated screen chemistry between Blanchett and Russell Crowe in their first film together, Robin Hood, did not live up to the hype, may have contributed somewhat to the muted response to her performance, good box office results aside.''

Both films were made after Blanchett became the co-artistic director of the STC, with husband Andrew Upton, in 2008. Blanchett said the theatre appointment was ''not a dalliance''. But has her firm commitment to the STC come at some expense to her film career?

The Oscar winner's original three-year contract included a clause allowing her to take three months out each year to pursue other activities.

Keller said: ''Her choice of projects - and what roles are on offer - would be limited.''

Keller also points out that as the mother of three young children, Blanchett may not want to constantly uproot her family to far-flung film locations.

Running a major theatre company may not be conducive to continued celluloid success, suggests the film critic Ed Gibbs. ''Kevin Spacey is the other most obvious example,'' he says. ''His film output has suffered somewhat while running the Old Vic in London.''

Blanchett's theatre focus may be a product of the ''celluloid ceiling'' that leaves quality actresses slogging it out for slim pickings, according to Professor Deb Verhoeven, from Deakin University's School of Communication and Creative Arts.

''Theatre offers roles that may not exist in the cinema [and] the opportunity to set the agenda in a way that the corporatisation of Hollywood sometimes limits.''

Even actors as famous as Blanchett required a plan B, Verhoeven said. ''The confronting career reality in Australia for actors is that, unless you want to work some of the time in retail selling shoes, you need to develop a suite of acting skills that can carry you from film to TV and to theatre and back again.''

Blanchett will not be performing in the STC's 2012 season, a decision that could impact the company's box office. In fact, Blanchett appears to be ramping up her film career, with the two blockbusters of The Hobbit and two other films, Lawless and Knight of Cups, being made.

Verhoeven said the critical reception to Blanchett's films, as shown by Slate's Hollywood Career-o-Matic, had consistently swung between good and bad: ''According to the Career-o-Matic, she's due for a critical hit and we should expect one soon.''