The Present

Every time Cate Blanchett has stepped onto a New York stage—whether it was as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire or Hedda in Hedda Gabler at BAM or as Claire in The Maids at City Center—it has been the must-see show of the season. Still, the Oscar-winner has never set foot on Broadway until now. This fall she will play the widow Anna Petrovna, who is in love with a Russian Don Juan named Mikhail, in her husband Andrew Upton’s new adaptation of Chekhov’s Platonov. The play, which takes place during Petrovna’s vodka-soaked 40th birthday party, was discovered 20 years after Chekhov’s death.