ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2020.
Co-directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy. February 28 – March 15 2020. Bookings: BASS 131 246. Adelaidefestival.com.au
Feature by Peter Wilkins
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| co-directors of Adelaide Festival 2020 Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield |
In the fading years of the
Nineteen Fifties, news executive, Sir Frederick Lloyd Dumas and Elder Professor
of Music, John Bishop shared a luminous vision. In 1960, the first Adelaide
Festival of Arts was launched with performances across almost all art forms,
performed by companies from Adelaide, other states and across the world.
Highlights included a production of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, concerts by the Victorian and Sydney
Symphony Orchestras, an appearance by British theatrical knight, Sir Donald
Wolfit and the Dave Brubeck Jazz Quartet. Sixty years later, the Adelaide
Festival is the leading arts festival in the Southern Hemisphere, second only
to its sister festival, the Edinburgh Festival on which the Adelaide Festival
was modelled. Originally a biennial festival, the Adelaide Festival is now an
annual event and the thirty- fifth Adelaide Festival will be staged from
February 28th to March 15th. At its helm will be
co-Artistic Directors, veteran theatre director, Neil Armfield and renowned
theatre administrator, Rachel Healy. Retiring General Manager is Rob Brookman
who introduced the world music festival WOMADelaide
during his time as Artistic Director. In 2020 music
enthusiasts will flock to the Botanic Gardens from March 12 - 15 for
Compagnie Carabosse’s Fire Gardens fashioned from thousands of individual flames. The hugely popular and free Adelaide Writer’s
Week has also been embraced by the
festival and artistic director Jo Dyer has introduced the theme Being Human to Writer’s Week which will
run from February 29th. to March 5th.
This will be Armfield and Healy’s
fourth year at the helm. Together they have staged three previous remarkable festivals,
highlighted by Barrie Kosky’s productions of Handel’s Saul and Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Armfield has also
directed groundbreaking productions of Andrew Bovell’s adaptation of Kate
Grenville’s Secret River in the
Anstey Quarry and Brett Dean’s contemporary operatic interpretation of William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I ask Armfield
what it is like to be programming their fourth festival.
“Every show has its own quirks
and characteristics and you work to make it as good as it can be.” Armfield
says. “It’s like giving birth to a child. We don’t tend to go in with a
particular theme. We go in looking for a specific energy. Our approach to
programming has been very mindful of the 60 year anniversary and that’s
particularly I think in the large public events - like the Doll’s House that Japanese visionary
artist Tatzu Nishi is constructing in
Rundle Mall. – the Tim Minchin free opening concert – the Fire Gardens –the
installation in the Botanic Garden –These works are spread across the entire
city and work for all ages. It’s also in the restudying of Lloyd Newson’s Enter Achilles that he brought to
Adelaide in 1996 and he is again looking
at the iconic DV8 dance work in the light of Brexit and the Me Too movement.”
If not a theme as the guiding
motif, contemporary issues certainly have an impact on the programming of the
2020 festival. In their opening welcome in the festival guide, Healey and
Armfield write “There is so much in our world that ios dysfunctional and
broken. Arts not only gives us respite, pleasure and joy. It gives us the
unexpected gift of reimagining. It provides tools for the future. It enables us
to rebuild” Armfield indicates some of the global influences that impose a
threat and are motivating forces behind the creation and inspiration of art.
Apart from the threat of climate change there is the impact of social media,
particularly on the way young people are thinking but also in the way that
society is being swayed. “Social media had a major impact on the US election –
the Brexit vote – how our institutions haven’t quite readjusted – that is what
I meant by that dysfunctional sense in society and that is in the works.”
Armfield says. “The Brexit vote shows how our institutions haven’t quite
readjusted and quite caught up. That is what I meant by that dysfunctional
sense in society and that is in the works.”
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Requiem from Festival d’Aix-en-Provence Photo by Pascal Victor
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Famous opera director Romeo
Castelluci tackles this head on in the Australian premiere of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart’s Requiem. At the back of his
stage design is a list of things that have become extinct. That morphs into
things in danger of becoming extinct and things that are not in danger or don’t
seem to be in danger but invite us to imagine a world without them.
Castelluci’s vision is a lament for what might be “profound, primal and never
to be forgotten”
With this driving inspiration in
force in Healy and Armfield’s programming, I cautiously venture to ask if he
could suggest highlights for audiences
who may need to be selective in their choice of programmes and timing. How does
one select highlights in a programme that is filled with highlights across all
art forms? Perhaps it would be wiser to focus on theatrical offerings and leave
readers to visit the online programme to make a wider selection. With this in
mind I enquire about other festival offerings that visitors to Adelaide might
not want to miss.
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| Juliet Stevenson in Robert Icke's The Doctor. Almeida Theatre |
Another Australian premiere and
Adelaide Festival exclusive is Robert Icke’s Almeida production of The Doctor, featuring Dame Juliet
Stevenson as a doctor confronted by the timely issues of religious freedom,
medical ethics, gender and class when she refuses a priest entry to a
teenager’s bedside to save the girl’s soul.
“It’s a really remarkable work.”
Armfield adds. “It connects very much with this context in our society.”
Over four days and twelve
separate concerts four choirs – the Norwegian Soloist’s Choir, The Tallis
Scholars from the UK, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and Australia’s The Song
Company will sing the 150 psalms from
the 3000 year old Hebrew Book of Psalms.
Audiences may select any or all concerts. “Each concert is tied to a
theme,” Armfield explains which has to do with refugees or issues in the world
like powerlessness and leadership and each is introduced by a contemporary
thought leader. The music ranges from Gregorian chant to new settings by
composers including Claire Maclean, Cathy Millikie, Kate Moore and Elena Kats-Chernin.
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William Zappa in The Iliad –Out Loud.
Photo: Jamie Williams
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Another ancient text that is
being reinterpreted in the festival is William Zappa’s adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad. After a hugely successful
season at Belvoir during the Sydney Festival, The Iliad comes to Adelaide with Zappa performing with Heather
Mitchell, Blazey Best and Socratis Otto. Michael Askill accompanies on
percussion and Hamed Sadegi lends an authentic tone on the Persian oud. With
such artists, the snappy nine hour reading will enthral audiences, immersed in
the retelling of Homer’s ancient myth. “We find that people are booking for the
nine hours rather than just a part of the experience.” says Armfield. “ It
opens up this work which is at the heart of all our Western Art. Homer was the
first cinematographer almost. He has a way of describing it that when you hear
it in a performance you realize that he was looking with an eye that prefigured
cinema. The work reminds us that all of western literature and western theatre
and poetry goes back to this source.”
With so many highlights to mark
the festival’s twenty year anniversary, audiences will be challenged in their
selection. Dance enthusiasts will want to see the Lyon Opera Ballet’s Trois Grandes Fugues, choregraphed by
three amazing contemporary choreographers, Lucy Childs, Anne Teresa De
Keersmaeker and Maguy Marin. Combining the elegant with the wild and
free-spirited with blood-red rage against death, it is hardly surprising that
the work should have been hailed by The TImes as “ a dazzling display of dance at its most inventive and transporting.”
Lyon Opera Ballet takes on the challenge of interpreting Beethoven’s
masterwork, The Great Fugue for Strings.
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Lyon Opera Ballet Trois-Grand Fugues 48
Photo: Bernard
Stothieth
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Imagine a dance created by
fingers and hands inside beautifully realized little sets. Edinburgh Fringe’s
top award-winning Cold Blood from
Belgium tells the story of seven stupid deaths in an almost indescribable
hybrid theatre performance.
Considered the greatest opera of
the 21st century “along with Hamlet” Armfield adds with a note
of pride, Opera Ventures and the
Scottish Opera’s production of Lars von Trier’s unforgettable 1996 film
classic, Breaking The Waves , composed
by Missy Mazzoli with a libretto by
Royce Vavrek “is a must see for opera, music and theatre lovers alike.”
After premiering at the Sydney
Festival, Nigel Jameison’s staging of Bungul
will appear at the Adelaide Festival.
The work is a celebration of Gurrumul Yunipinju’s final album Djarimirri (subtitled Child
of the Rainbow) and has been developed by members of Gurrumul’s family. It
is a work of ritual, of dance and harmonised chants from Gurrumul’s traditional
Yolnju life with great orchestral settings of his final album.
To say the 2020 Adelaide Festival
will have something for everyone would be an understatement. A browse of the
programme reveals a plethora of gems across all aspects of the arts. Arts
enthusiasts will have the choice of 74 events including 19 playing exclusively
in Adelaide, 16 Australian premieres and 7 world premieres. “Rachel and I have got a bit of a rhythm up in
the development of an understanding of what was working and what people were
loving In our first three festivals. We go into the 2020 festival with maybe
more of sense of confidence about what audiences will travel for and what can
really animate this city at that time. Getting the theatre programme together
has been quite tricky. That’s just circumstantial
in a way. We had a number of works that
we were pursuing that for one reason or another couldn’t happen but The Doctor came and was
secured only days before the cut off for the programme. The response to that
show and the programme has been phenomenal “
And that perhaps is why Adelaide at
Festival time is the place to be!
ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2020 February 28 - March 15
ADELAIDE WRITERS WEEK: February 29 - March 5
WOMADelaide: March 6 - 9
Bookings: Bass 131 246 or www.adelaidefestival.com.au