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
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| Virginia Gay Artistic Director Photo Cludio Raschella |
Australia’s premier cabaret
festival kicks off to a glittering start with a Variety Gala on June 5th
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.
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| 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.
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| 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 25th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 25th
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!”
