Adelaide Festival 2018.
Joint Artistic Directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healey. The Adelaide Festival Centre. March 2 – 18 2018.
For programme information and bookings go to www.adelaidefestival.com.au or email info@adelaidefestival.com.au or phone BASS on 131246
Previewed by Peter Wilkins
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| The Lost and Found Orchestra |
“There’s no
doubt – Adelaide in March is the place to be” It certainly is, and especially
with joint Artistic Directors of the Adelaide Festival, Neil Armfield AO and
Rachel Healey at the helm for their second year. This comes as no great
surprise given the resounding success of their first festival last year. Audiences
are still raving about Barrie Kosky’s amazing production of Handel’s Saul, direct from Glyndebourne to the Festival
Theatre stage and Armfield’s own highly acclaimed production of Andrew Bovell’s
adaptation of Kate Grenville’s Secret
River under the night sky at Anstey’s Quarry. This year, Armfield’s
Glyndebourne production of Hamlet will be the hottest ticket in town and the short
season is already virtually sold out.
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| Brett Dean's Hamlet from Glyndebourne Festival Opera |
Hamlet is only
one of the stunning array of events on
offer at the 2018 Adelaide Festival.
Visitors to Adelaide will have a mind-blowing choice of forty eight theatre,
music, opera, dance, film and visual arts events. This is in addition to the
popular free Writer’s Week and the magnificent world music event WOMADelaide.
From the 2nd. to
the 18th. March 2018, Adelaide audiences will have the opportunity
to revel in four world premieres, 14 Australian premieres and 13 events
exclusive to Adelaide, arguably the site of the nation’s oldest and most
prestigious arts festival.
“In 2018 we have
programmed works of mighty scale and whispering intimacy”, Healey and Armfiield
say, “all of them fired by an ambition to enthrall, challenge, awe and
inspire." This is no ambit claim. The dynamic duo bring years of
experience, talent and vision to the task, having worked together to establish
Belvoir as one of the most innovative, adventurous and creative theatre companies
in the country. The success alone of last year’s sell-out festival augurs well
for another triumphant arts festival
under their stewardship.
Premier Jay
Weatherill proudly claims the Adelaide Festival to be the nation’s leading arts
festival. It is certainly the oldest, having been launched in 1960 in honour of
its founding father, the late Professor John Bishop. “Tens of thousands of
people will converge on Adelaide”, the Premier says, “to soak up the art,
culture, conversations and ideas that the Adelaide
Festival presents, alongside WOMADelaide
and Adelaide Writer’s Week.”
The Festival
State has long been renowned for its family events and the opening of this year’s
festival is no exception. The Lost and
Found Orchestra will kick off this year’s festival with a resounding bang.
Over two nights, festival-goers will be able to flock to Elder Park on the bank
of the River Torrens to enjoy free entertainment and a musical extravaganza
conceived by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas of STOMP fame, and an international sensation after its 1992 Adelaide
Festival appearance. Instruments adapted from traffic cones, water coolers,
saws and kitchen sinks will accompany troupes of comedians, aerialists and
young and old musicians.
Heading other
festival highlights will be Brett Dean’s version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, direct from Glyndebourne Festival
Opera. Like this year’s phenomenal production of Handel’s Saul, Hamlet will be
accompanied by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the State Opera of South
Australia chorus. Seats to the Adelaide Festival Theatre production are already
selling like hotcakes.
Those who
remember the remarkable production of The
Roman Tragedies from Amsterdam’s Toneelgroep, will rush to buy tickets for
this year’s thrilling and powerful production of Kings of War, drawing on Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry Vl Parts 1
and 2 and 3 and Richard lll.
Noone will want
to miss Ex Machina’s The Far Side of the
Moon, a virtuoso one man performance by Yves Jacques under the direction of
brilliant theatre maker, Robert Lepage.
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| Grace Jones |
Musical
highlights include the return to Adelaide after 36 years of Grace Jones in a not to be missed one
night concert. Hailed as successor to the legendary Billie Holiday, jazz
vocalist, Cecile McLorin Salvant has Grammy Awards to her credit, and is sure
to wow Adelaide audiences in her single performance. Another one nighter is the
amazing Kate Miller-Heidke who will
join the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra for the Adelaide premiere of her biggest
hits. Lovers of opera will not want to miss Swedish mezzo soprano, Anne Sophie von Otter. In contrast to
these solo performers Rundfunkchor
Berlin will make their first and only choral appearance in Adelaide.
Imagine Brahm’s soulful songs being sung as the choir moves among the audience,
singing of Death while providing comfort to the living.
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| Xenos with Akram Kahn |
Dance has long
been a feature of Adelaide’s artistic oeuvre. Audiences who witnessed the magic
of Akram Khan’s dance work at the recent OzAsia Festival in Adelaide will be
eager to see his solo farewell performance. Xenos is inspired by the Prometheus myth and will mark the end of
Kahn’s 30 year career as arguably the world’s greatest male dancer. This is a
rare treat for Adelaide audiences, and one that is not to be missed.
The theatre
highlights of next year’s festival alone are reason enough to book a flight to
Australia’s picturesque city of gardens and churches in the mad month of March.
Armfield’s former company Belvoir will bring artistic director Simon Stone’s
thrilling adaptation of Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes
to Adelaide. Audiences familiar with Stone’s work will expect a provocative and
mind bending interpretation of the bloodthirsty classic. They will not be
disappointed. Stone brings Seneca’s first century classic hurtling into the 21st
century. “It’s perhaps the most disturbing, funny, beautiful and unforgettable
90 minutes of Australian theatre an audience is ever likely to experience.” the
media release claims. One would expect
nothing less from director, Simon Stone.
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| Simon Stone's Thyestes |
Since its
beginnings, the Adelaide Festival has pioneered extraordinary performances by
leading international companies. In 2018, Belgian Youth Theatre Company,
BRONKS, will present Us/Them in memory of the horrific 2004 siege by
Chechan terrorists of the public school in Beslan. Directed by Carly Wijs, the
play tells the story from the perspective of a girl and a boy who were inside
at the time. Originally staged at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe, the play will be
exclusively performed at the Adelaide Festival after a sell-out season at
London’s National Theatre.
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| ShiberHur Theatre presents AZZA |
Adelaide’s
ground breaking Brink Productions whom audiences may remember as the producer
of Chris Drummond’s startling production of Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling, has
certainly earned its stripes to feature in a major arts festival. Alice
Oswald’s poetic masterpiece, Memorial personalizes
the deaths of 215 soldiers immortalized in Homer’s Iliad. This gigantic
collaboration with Oswald will feature the legendary Helen Morse, a live score
by Golden Globe nominated composer Jocelyn Pook and a massive cast of local volunteers. This timely production will
celebrate the Centenary of the 1918 Armistice.
Music theatre
production AZZA will be the first
Australian visit by the celebrated ShiberHur Theatre Company under the
direction of Palestinian director Amir Nizar Zuabi. Azza is the Arabic word for the three days of mourning that follow
a death, The production invites audiences to follow one family whose communal
grief, shared history and ancient rituals “open a window into the soul of a
community”
TAHA will be
performed as a companion piece to AZZA under the direction of Amer Hlehel. TAHA
tells the story of the great Palestinian poet, Taha Muhammad Ali a monologue infused
by the hypnotic and sensuous language of Taha’s verse, a tale of hope, terror
displacement, grief and joy will unfold.
Arthur Sauer’s
compelling soundtrack will recall the fierce sacrifice and suffering of the
Great War as performed by Dutch live animation company Hotel Modern. THE GREAT WAR
is adapted from lost letters of a French soldier to his mother, the miniature
worlds created on the stage and projected onto large screens.
The State
Theatre Company of South Australia presents In The Club, Patricia Cornelius’s about the darkest elements of
football culture. Cornelius has drawn on real life testimony of female AFL fans
to create visceral theatre, a combination of documentary and Greek Tragedy.
Artistic director, Geordie Brookman directs a cast of actors for whom the work
has been specifically written.
I have barely
scraped the surface of the 2018 Adelaide Festival. Visual Art exhibitions, free
family events, free Writers’ Week sessions on the Torrens Parade Ground lawns
and the glorious sounds emanating from WOMADelaide between the Botanic Gardens
and the Adelaide Zoo offer yet another amazing cultural banquet to suit every
taste.
In their Welcome
to the Adelaide Festival programme booklet, Armfield and Healey say, “We
search for work that is unforgettable, beautiful, rich in meaning and with a
theatrical daring and scale that claims its place on a festival stage. Our
world might feel caught between seemingly irreconcilable contradictions –
forces that threaten to tear it apart – but the desire for meaning and
reconciliation, for justice and for love, beauty and joy is stronger than ever.
This is the light that great art creates.”
Illuminating,
daring and uplifting, the 2018 Adelaide Festival will have something for
everyone, but more than that it will shine a light upon our world and our place
in it and give us hope for a better and brighter future. Adelaide in March is
certainly the place to be and the 2018 Adelaide Festival the event to visit. It
promises to be a not to be missed experience whose short time is sure to last a
lifetime.
