Reviews

The Maho Magic Bar has returned to Adelaide Fringe in The Garden of Unearthly Delights. Modelled on the Magic bars of Tokyo, tricksters entertain the audience whilst they sip on cocktails. Inside the Maho Bar, there are four bar areas and a separate table and each one hosts a conjurer. The atmosphere is loud, raucous…

Best known as a finalist on the commercial television singing competition, The Voice, Prinnie Stevens is a singer and theatre performer, starring in productions including The Bodyguard and Thriller Live. In Lady Sings the Blues, Prinnie brings her Tongan Catholic heritage to stage and maps out a life and love of strong women in music….

Many Sydneysiders are already familiar with Blanc de Blanc. Strut N Fret’s incredibly flirtatious, Champagne-fueled stab at high-class cabaret has played around the city for years, popping up every so often at different views including a sell-out season at Sydney Opera House. Now, it’s back. And quite honestly, we should all be so glad that…

With a disco soundtrack that had more than one person dancing in the aisles, Velvet Rewired at the Sydney Opera House is an explosion of glitter, glam and classic 70s hits. Lead by the iconic Marcia Hines, the night is filled with aerial feats, acrobatics and vocal talents. The show adopts a vaudeville – style…

Bringing together performers from Australia and abroad, L’Hôtel at the Sydney Opera House combines cabaret, circus and a touch of burlesque all within the walls of an opulent French hotel lobby. Directed by Craig Ilott and choreographed by Lucas Newland and Jo Cotterill, the audience is invited to take a seat in Le Salon and…

Cirque Du Soleil’s first brand new production since the pandemic, Drawn To Life, is also their first official Walt Disney collaboration. This is despite having had a theatre on the Disney Springs grounds in Orlando since 1998. The beautiful space was their first custom built, permanent venue and residency outside of Las Vegas, with the…

Presented by Circa, Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus has a short stint at the Theatre Royal, adding a cheeky element of fun to the school holidays. The show is a more ‘child-friendly’ version of its adult counterpart, Circa’s Peepshow, which runs parallel in the evenings. The classical composer’s music comes to life on stage as the…

The Strut and Fret Production Company have had a very successful relationship with the Adelaide Fringe over the years. Popular shows such as Limbo and Blanc de Blanc have had sell-out seasons. Their latest offering, The Purple Rabbit is easily set to follow this trend. The show is set at the Roundhouse, in the Garden…

What is the difference between Soggy and Moist? For this Scratch Arts team, it’s the level of camp, clothing, and age relevancy. Both shows use the same actors. They both have the same storyline. Both feature bubbles and fun props. But they are aimed at very different markets. Loosely the story is that our hero…

As the lights go down in the Octagon tent in Gluttony, three dancers emerge on stage in billowing sheets. It sets a sexy sultry mood. Arcadia is described as a “Journey to a desert utopia celebrating idealistic social values of the wild and free.” The mood suddenly changes as Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” sounds out….

Strut & Fret’s Blanc de Blanc have been a popular part of the Adelaide Fringe in recent years, and this year the team returns for an Encore. With all the glam, glitz, cabaret, burlesque, camp and tasteful nudity we’ve come to expect, there is something for almost all of the family. Acrobats twirl overhead and…

The Massaoke Oz open air sing-along dance spectacular is back at Moa in Gluttony for more Fringe fun. The five-piece band decked out in glitter and glam certainly warmed up the crowd with all the party tune favorites from the 70s, 80s and 90s. A relaxation in COVID rules meant that you could dance, albeit…

Jennifer Trijo, OzAsia and Fringe Festival performer, has created Someday – A Mindful Cabaret performance at artist collective space The Mill. Together with performers Amber Fibrosi and Jakub Gaudasinski, the trio perform soulful and uplifting songs as well as challenging ourselves to be the best that we can be. Early in the performance there is…

A drag-filled cabaret circus themed around the theological Roman Catholic seven deadly sins? Sounds like a recipe for something raucous but distinctly left of centre, filled with innuendo and debauchery! ‘Sinsuality: Make It Reign’ brings all that and more, led by larger-than-life drag MC BarbieQ, driving the show forward all while offering insights into her…

Similar to how Jordan Peele, Robert Eggers, Jennifer Kent, and Ari Aster all secured their place in the annals of genre cinema with their debut offerings, Julia Docournau‘s bold cannibalistic horror effort Raw cemented the French filmmaker as a name to pay consistent attention to.  And just as those aforementioned auteurs all swung big with…

In the comfortably chic apartment “La Vie En Rose” cackles on the gramophone. “A life in pink”, as it translates. “Miss Nightingale” swishes through the sheer curtains to fix the crack in the record. Karla Hillam is Miss Nightingale and her voice and looks are perfect for the role. A shock of red hair falls…

A perfectly stupendous amount of ‘Dum’! The critically acclaimed and globally touring Australian circus company, Dummies Corp, lights up the stage at The Famous Spiegeltent in Melbourne with their first adult-themed circus comedy – The Dumtectives in Cirque Noir. As part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, this show blasts you into a world of…

A lone wanderer stumbles amongst a crew of meta-human misfits in a dystopian world, industrial, cyberpunk in the not-too-distant future. This is the Barbaroi and this is her initiation. The stage is stripped, stark, future industrial and feels like a movie set. A driving contemporary musical backdrop includes artists such as NIN, Radiohead and early…

The open-air MOA mini stadium at the rear of Gluttony was literally packed to the rafters. A dedicated crowd of followers of Hugh Sheridan were there to watch him strut his stuff in HUGHMAN. Bursting onstage, Sheridan soon spotted a Crows-guernsey-wearing man and pulled him on stage. Surprise. He’s one of the plethora of dancers…

My closing memory of Yas Queen is a rousing rendition of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” with the audience standing and cheering a stunning performance. The journey along the way was a roller coaster ride of emotion. The opening number was also strong, but a number of factors threatened to derail the show. There was the…

Reuben Kaye is no stranger to Adelaide audiences. He is entertained and delighted us over several festivals and fringes. As emcee tonight, Kaye invites us down his late-night Kaye Hole with a group of fellow performers. The Kaye Hole is a safe place, except if you’re a straight heterosexual man who, for once, find themselves…

Charismatic, bedazzling, intelligent, salacious and unbelievably natural on stage. Reuben Kaye’s self-titled cabaret drag solo show has it all. Humour, theatre and brute/obscene honesty as well as an entrancing level of crowd interaction. Described as “the evil love child of Liza Minnelli and Jim Carrey”, Kaye is one of the headline acts at this month’s Fringe…

Globally acclaimed Queensland contemporary circus group Circa have delivered a sequel to their ground breaking 2017 show Humans. Humans 2.0 is a ‘love letter to humanity’, exploring trust, vulnerability and the extremes of human ability. Those extremes are of evident immediately, as the cast of 10 begin with outrageous feats of acrobatics. At times it…

Autocannibal presents a dystopian circus exploring the nature of sustenance. Isolated as the only remaining human in a world bereft of food and water, our protagonist battles a sea of junk and plastic, avoiding the obvious reality that there’s only one thing remaining for him to truly eat. Mick Jones is a versatile performer, delivering…

There was a good crowd in the Magic Mirror Spiegeltent for the final weekend performance of Rouge. Despite the increasing talk of COVID-19 in the press, audiences remained undaunted and expectant. The tent has a circular stage in the centre, with good views all round. The high fabric and glass covered walls gave the space…

Dystopia is a dark fantastical production set in a post-apocalyptic future Earth. The opening screen shows a static montage of bomber planes, skulls, wartime destruction. This sets the scene for the performance to come. The audience catches glimpses of the characters, an elfin ballerina, a doll, lone guitarist, a zombie troupe and more. The lone…

Walking into Barbaroi is like walking into a familiar street scene from an early 80s movie. The Ukiyo circus tent is set up in an industrial way, with lighting that makes it feel dark and mysterious. There are six characters in this show who are introduced video game style: a bearded juggler, a bare-chested circus…

It’s always worth paying close attention when a Las Vegas production signs on for a substantial extension, even years after it has already been playing in the same spot. It means the show has become its own sizable piece in the endless jigsaw of culture, class and crass that is a typical night on the…

The Adelaide Fringe is over for another successful year and Club Briefs was the perfect way to celebrate the final evening. The Briefs Factory is an Australian creative collective who “manufacture, cultivate and present evocative, irreverent, physical performance”. Our MC for the night is Shivannah, who is sassy, loud and irreverent. Her costume changes between…

The Redhead Cabaret is a company of red-haired performers with a mission to share all the energy and pizzaz that this genetic disposition boasts. So reads the manifesto to this late night cabaret. As the sold out crowd fills the tent, a schoolteacher with a whip and a boy in a g-string stand on stage…