Cate Blanchett
© AFP/File Filippo MonteforteSYDNEY (AFP) - Blanchett, who will take over co-directorship of the country's biggest theatre company with her playwright husband Andrew Upton next week, directed Thursday's opening of Scottish playwright David Harrower's 'Blackbird'.
The play, which deals with a sexual relationship between an underage girl and a middle-aged man, was directed with "a great sensitivity for the rhythms and silences of Harrower's spare, fragmented but theatrically poetic dialogue," critic John McCallum wrote in The Australian.
"It is Blanchett's second stint in the director's chair and she shows a sure touch for the subtleties of a humanly complex dramatic situation," he said.
Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Bryce Hallett said "Cate Blanchett's assured production draws strong and gripping performances".
"Blanchett's spare, intelligent staging stimulates thoughts about the nature of care and abuse and, moreover, perception about paedophilia," Hallett wrote in Saturday's newspaper.
Blanchett had said she wanted the play to inspire "discussion, debate, controversy and disgust".
"It definitely knocks on the doors of one's taboos and demands to be let in," she told Sydney's Sun-Herald earlier this month. "I can't wait to put it in front of audiences."
Blanchett's directorial debut was with Harold Pinter's 'A Kind of Alaska' at the Sydney Theatre Company in late 2006 -- just weeks after her appointment was announced.
The appointment of the actress who has received critical acclaim for silver screen roles as diverse as Queen Elizabeth and Bob Dylan has raised questions in Sydney's theatre industry due to her relative inexperience as a director.
One actor quit the prestigious troupe, saying "an Oscar for acting is not a suitable recommendation to run the biggest theatre company in the country".
But Blanchett has said she was unworried by such criticism.
"You don't want to be surrounded by yeah-sayers... that creates a monoculture and would be the death of theatre," she said.
"If it wasn't me, I don't think anyone would really have noticed."
Blanchett won an Oscar in 2005 for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator".
©AFP