Presented as part of the London 2012 Festival, it is co-commissioned by the Barbican with a new English text by Martin Crimp and is directed by Benedict Andrews.

According to press materials, the play -- first staged in 1978 – "whisks audiences down a rabbit hole and into a curious Wonderland-like world where Lotte (Blanchett) is always trying to fit in. Following a break-up with her husband, Lotte finds herself a stranger to her own society and embarks on a search for human connection and a quest for belonging. At each stage in her journey she has unusual encounters with different people – strangers and acquaintances, family members, an old friend, but in this comedy of tragic solitude, reality itself keeps changing and Lotte becomes increasingly alienated from a culture she struggles to recognise. Like Carroll's Alice, sometimes Lotte is too big for her surroundings and sometimes too small to be noticed within them."

In a press statement, Toni Racklin, Head of Theatre at the Barbican, commented, "Large scale international drama is at the heart of the Barbican's theatre programme and we are delighted to be co-commissioning partners with Sydney Theatre Company and our colleagues in Paris, Recklinghausen and Vienna to present Botho Strauss's extraordinary work, Big and Small (Gross und Klein). We welcome Sydney Theatre Company to the Barbican for their first visit in this important year. Cate Blanchett recently won Best Actress at the Sydney Theatre Awards for her performance as Lotte, and we are very proud that this production is one of the leading projects in the London 2012 Festival prior to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games."

In addition to Blanchett, the cast comprises Lynette Curran, Anita Hegh, Belinda McClory, Josh McConville, Robert Menzies, Katrina Milosevic, Yalin Ozucelik, Richard Piper, Richard Pyros, Sophie Ross, Chris Ryan, Christopher Stollery and Martin Vaughan.

For more details, visit ww.barbican.org.uk.