ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL 2025

 

Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2025. 

Artistic director Virginia Gay. Executive Producer Alex Sinclair. Adelaide Festival Centre. June 5-21 2025 Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au

Previewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Virginia Gay  Artistic Director
Photo Cludio Raschella

Australia’s premier cabaret festival kicks off to a glittering start with a Variety Gala on June 5^th in Adelaide’s prestigious Festival Theatre. It is difficult to believe that the first Adelaide Cabaret Festival opened twenty five years ago, the brainchild of the late Frank Ford and under the artistic direction of the inaugural director Julia Holt. Since then the Cabaret Festival has grown into the largest international cabaret festival in the world. As well as attracting phenomenal talent from around the country many of the world’s greatest cabaret artists have appeared at this jewel in the Adelaide Festival Centre’s festival crown. From around the world people flock to Australia’s festival state to soak up the atmosphere in intimate, cosy and thrilling cabaret venues.

David Campbell

After hosting her first successful festival in 2024, the inimitable and incandescent Virginia Gay returns to present a programme worthy of this milestone occasion. ”For me it’s a huge honour to have the guardianship of the festival when it is celebrating such an extraordinary anniversary.” Gay tells me. ”What I want to do is to honour our legacy act, the act that has made us. The act that has changed us.”

After 25 years, Gay is in no doubt about what cabaret is and her voice sparkles with excitement. “Cabaret is mischief, wit, sass, celebration of community and just a little whiff of chaos” she says with a twinkle in her voice. “That to me is everything that cabaret is and does. What is exciting about my cabaret festival,” Gay says, “is that it has a place in the global firmament of arts festivals. International stars are excited to come here and work with us. It is so thrilling and is a testament to the Artistic Directors who have come before me.”  The list is a roll call of Australia’s brightest cabaret talent including David and Lisa Campbell, Kate Ceberano, Ali MacGregor and Eddie Perfect, Barrie Humphries, Julia Zemiro and to give it that touch of international pizzazz Alan Cumming. The roll call of artists is too long to mention but over the past twenty years they have defined the nature of cabaret, stamped it with their phenomenal talent and turned Adelaide into the epicentre of everything that makes cabaret the thrill that it is.

Carlotta Photo Claudio Raschella

As a salute to the origins of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Gay has invited the one and only Carlotta to open the 2025 festival. Carlotta opened the very first festival and now, a quarter of a century later and at the unstoppable age of 81, Carlotta will return to introduce artists and audience alike to the 25^th anniversary festival.. The past, the present and the future will be the cornerstones to Gay’s selection of artists. Performers like Bernadette Robinson, piano man Trevor Jones , Reuben Kaye and David Campbell will be familiar favourites from previous festivals.

 

Jessica Mauboy Photo Peter Brew Bevan

Newcomers like Jacob Collier and Demi Adejuyigbe and The Burton Brothers will bring their international acts that are changing the present and the young aspiring cabaret artists of Class of Cabaret will launch the art form into the future. Gay reminds me that “cabaret is irreverent, it is sexy, it is fearless. It is not afraid to speak uncomfortable truths and hold power to account.” That is why artists like Rizo and Reuben Kaye play an integral role in the cabaret festival. “There is no separation between audience and performer in this show. At any second Reuben Kaye is going to have his head in your lap. And that is cabaret my friend!”

The twenty-fifth anniversary cabaret will be a showcase of familiar faces, new talents and future stars of the cabaret stage. Best newcomer at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, American writer, comedian, filmmaker and performer Demi Adejuyigbe promises the most perfect, hilarious and insane show at the festival. Time Out called Demi Adejuyigbe is Going to Do One (1) Backflip both ramshackle and slick, the future of Musical Comedy. Audiences are asked to expect the unexpected.  Adejuyigbe has the kind of charisma that could power a city. While playing Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac in Edinburgh during her UK tour, Gay could not get a ticket to Demi’s sold out show. She had to wait until the London performances to get to see this new cabaret sensation.

The Burton Brothers Photo Simon McCulloch

Also new to the festival is six times Grammy award winning multi-instrumentalist and composer Jacob Collier. In an Australian exclusive Collier will wow audiences with improvisation, genre bending songs and audience participation. It promises to be a two night stand only to remember. For a deliciously absurdist dose of comedy, audiences won’t want to miss The Burton Brothers – 1925. Real life brothers , the Burton Brothers will present an hilarious sketch comedy show set entirely in the year 1925. The Great War is over, the Jazz Age is in full swing and their two part harmony jazz classics herald in a new age of optimism. “It’s very, very funny.” Gay says. Award winning singer, comedian and screenwriter Frankie McNair brings her alter ego, ageing lounge singer Tabitha to the 2025 Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Described by Gay as a Melbourne superstar, she also claims that there is no one more fearless than McNair “ an alternative comedy wunderkind”.

An anniversary as significant as this year’s cabaret festival has an obligation to salute the past, applaud the present and imagine the future. ”What is truly exciting and such an honour when you have this position,” Gay says,”is to look towards the future and say what cabaret could be.” More than ten years ago, David and Lisa Campbell introduced the Class of Cabaret to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Twenty young people are selected to write their own material and work with industry mentors and leadership to devise a show of 65 minutes.

Class of Cabaret 2024

This year their efforts will count towards their HSC results, but that is unlikely to affect their bravery and daring to forge a new future in cabaret. “It is the show most guaranteed to make me cry.” Gay tells me. ”Tears of pride are so strong. I can see them putting their heart on the line and speaking honestly with authenticity. We really need storytellers like that. We go into the future to empower the next generation of storytellers. We say to them your voice is important. You can change the world!” Gay says to these 16 and 17 year old cabaret artists of the future “You are going to change the world and make it funny and fabulous and deeply, deeply attractive. That’s cabaret.”  It is a bold message of hope and optimism for the next generation.

The interview is coming to an end but I have time for one final question. “What can audiences expect from the 25^th anniversary festival?” Gay is quick to answer. “People can expect a rollicking good time, authenticity and immediacy and mischief and they can probably make a couple of new friends over a couple of glasses of very nice champagne. And that my friend is cabaret!”