Following last year’s award winning Sydney Festival offering, The War of the Roses, Sydney Theatre Company returns with Optimism, the first production of the Company’s 2010 Main Stage season, at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House from 8 January 2010. Associate Director Tom Wright transforms Voltaire's classic 18th century novel of
enlightened insanity, Candide, into a cutting commentary on the no worries bravura of the contemporary swagger.

Directed by Michael Kantor, Optimism is co-produced with Sydney Festival, Melbourne’s Malthouse and Edinburgh International Festival where it opened the theatre program in 2009, winning a prestigious Herald Angel Award for Frank Woodley.

An ensemble cast includes Woodley as the criminally cheerful Candide who travels with unbridled enthusiasm from Edenic paradise to painful disillusionment with a round-the-world journey reminiscent of the best adventure and romance tales. In a quest to return to his childhood love, Candide encounters war, plague, religion, sex and a cast of pitiful unfortunates. Woodley is joined on stage by a cast of consummate character actors: Amanda Bishop, Caroline Craig, Francis Greenslade, Hamish Michael, Barry Otto, Alison Whyte and David Woods.

Michael Kantor directs a rambunctious, fantastical, circus-themed production where economic downturn, global warming and terrorism are all now a part of life. Live music performed onstage by Alan John and the company, includes the relentlessly optimistic D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better, Hazie Fantazee’s Shiny Shiny, I Could be Happy by Altered Images and the Go Betweens’ Clouds.

Director: Michael Kantor. Set and Costume Designer: Anna Tregloan.Composer: Iain Grandage. Lighting Designer: Paul Jackson. Sound Designer: Russell Goldsmith. Choreographer: Luke George.

Cast: Amanda Bishop, Caroline Craig, Francis Greenslade, Hamish Michael, Barry Otto, Alison Whyte, Frank Woodley, David Woods. With music performed live by Alan John.