Jane Turner is to play a mother with a difficult daughter. No, it’s not a stage version of Kath & Kim, it’s a West End hit play, part of the Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2015 season. Called Jumpy, it should be a splendid vehicle for this prodigiously talented actress.

The MTC Director Brett Sheehy has launched a varied and ground-breaking season for next year which may well see the company reclaim its position at the pinnacle of Australian theatre. The season has innovation and stars: a musical titled What Rhymes with Cars and Girls based on the Tim Rogers CD of original songs with a connecting theme accompanied by a script by Aidan Fennessy, and the stage adaptation of North by Northwest being developed in collaboration with Warner Bros.

In parallel with the STC, the MTC is mounting a new production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. It’s not a Beckett anniversary year or anything. You may have thought that one production was too many. But it is a vehicle for Melbourne’s excellent cast of Colin Friels, Julie Forsyth and Luke Mullins. And there’s Belinda McClory and Aaron Pedersen in The Waiting Room by Kylie Trounson about her father’s breakthroughs in fertility research.

Susie Porter in Death and the Maiden, plus Harold Pinter’s Betrayal with Alison Bell, plus the very special Nadine Garner in a new Irish play The Weir, plus other imaginative elements, all add up to what could be an outstanding year for MTC.