The Talented Mr Ripley (A RES)
Playhouse
Arts Centre Melbourne
By Patricia Highsmith
Adapted for the stage by Joanna Murray-Smith
Directed by Sarah Goodes
How far would you go to live the perfect life?
From playwriting icon Joanna Murray-Smith comes this ravishing adaptation of the twentieth century’s most glamorous thriller. Following the triumphant success of Julia, Murray-Smith reunites with director Sarah Goodes to masterfully transform this seductive page-turner into an electrifying, world-premiere stage experience.
Will McDonald (Heartbreak High) plays Tom Ripley, an orphan and a striver, barely scraping by in 1950s New York. But beneath his woebegone exterior, Tom cultivates certain talents that set him apart: an extraordinary capacity for mimicry and deception. He is a man with a face no-one remembers. Whereas no one could forget Dickie Greenleaf. He is everything Tom isn’t; confident, stylish, and heir to a large fortune. Tom is hired by Dickie’s father to bring his son home and so plunges him into a glittering world of luxury, beauty and hedonism on the Italian Riviera. Intoxicated with this new social scene, Tom begins to fashion himself after his target. He begins dancing like Dickie, dressing like him, and drinking like him. Tom begins to imagine another version of himself. A better one… and he’ll kill for it.
For 70 years Tom Ripley has captivated readers and cinephiles alike. Now, literature’s most alluring confidence man is brought to life before our eyes in the hands of one of Australia’s great playwrights and most brilliant directors. Also featuring Faisal Hamza, Andrew McFarlane, Johnny Nasser and Claude Scott-Mitchell, The Talented Mr. Ripley promises tension, passion and spectacular suspense.