'Carol's' Cate Blanchett To Debut On Broadway In The Present, A Chekhov Adaption Of Platonov

Cate Blanchett will be making her Broadway debut this winter.  The 46-year old Best Actress nominee for Carol will star in The Present, a play written by her husband, screenwriter Andrew Upton.  The show is an adaption of Anton Chekhov's Platonov, which has already been in production to sold-out audiences at the Sydney Theatre Company in Australia, for which Blanchett and Upton have served as co-artistic directors.

Although it is the Blue Jasmine Oscar winner's first time on the Great White Way, she has appeared in several New York stage productions including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Maids Hedda Gabler and her husband's adaption of Uncle Vanya.  The latter of which co-starred Moulin Rogue! actor Richard Roxburgh, who joins Blanchett on Broadway after co-headlining with her in The Present's Australian production.  

News of the upcoming theater project is a somewhat unexpected, yet a happy surprise since Blanchett recently told Harper's Bazaar UK she was taking a break from performing to spend more time with family.  The Aviator actress recently adopted new daughter Edith.  Of course, this may explain why the play will only be a limited run. 

The updated more humorous version of Chekhov's classic features Blanchett as Anna Petrovna, a widow celebrating her birthday in Russia with her friends during the 1990s.  When Roxburgh's Platonov, a former schoolteacher, arrives with his wife and former students, twenty years of relationships and remorse surface.  The show will directed by John Crowley, whose latest film Brooklyn is nominated for Best Picture this year.  "It's about life, basically, and the choices that a group of people make," said the Irish filmmaker who added "It's also very, very, Chekhov, in a lot of ways truer to his spirit than a lot of period productions which rely heavily on a certain mood rather than actual drama. And it's extremely witty."

No word yet on the date of Blanchett's Broadway opening. In the meantime, The Hobbit star will be gearing up for her seventh nomination at next month's Academy Awards.  Ironically, in a year that she expected to lie low, she could be looking at her third Oscar and her first Tony.