What’s On at Adelaide Festival Centre

Due to the developing COVID-19 situation, please note that all programmes listed in this article are subject to changes. For the latest information and updates, please refer directly to the organiser’s website.

Adelaide Festival Centre’s Autumn Season (Mar – May)

A Broadway musical, world-class jazz concert and a children’s show by ARIA Award-winning rock band Regurgitator are among the highlights of Adelaide Festival Centre’s Autumn 2020 season.

The Festival Theatre will rock its way into autumn with the opening of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s international phenomenon School of Rock the Musical. Based on the iconic hit movie, the award-winning production has conquered Broadway and London’s West End and is now coming to Adelaide from 20 March 20 to 19 April.

School of Rock the Musical is coming to Adelaide Festival Centre.

In the Dunstan Playhouse, Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show will feature a collection of silly and cheeky songs from the band’s debut kids album The Really Really Really Really Boring Album on 18 April.

Adelaide Festival Centre will again join global celebrations for UNESCO’s International Jazz Day and can now reveal the full line-up for International Jazz Day Concert at Woodville Town Hall on 30 April.

As Musical Director, renowned Adelaide musician and composer Lyndon Gray is bringing together a stellar line-up of South Australia’s best local jazz talent: Bonnie Aué (double bass), Lazaro Numa (trumpet), Josh Baldwin (drums), Lauren Henderson (vocals), David McEvoy (keyboard), Django Rowe (guitar) and award-winning vocalist Michelle Nicolle along with foyer special guest artists The Boys Club, an all-female jazz trio.

The Boys Club will perform at the International Jazz Day Concert. (Photo Credit: Jarrod Knoblaunch)

They will be joined by two international guest artists from the UNESCO Creative Cities Network – acclaimed composer/pianist Pawel Tomaszewski (Katowice, Poland) and tenor saxophonist Piero Odorici (Bologna, Italy).

Tomaszewski is a respected recording artist, composer and educator in the European jazz scene, while Odorici’s extensive recording and touring career spanning 30 years has seen him perform in European and American festivals with jazz greats such as George Cables and Ray Mantilla, along with the late George Michael and Luciano Pavarotti.

National Reconciliation Week events will include the world premiere of Grandmothers Songs, a collection of new and unrecorded original works by Ngaanyatjarra singer-songwriter Vonda Last accompanied by Julian Ferraretto’s Pocket String Quartet, in Adelaide Festival Centre’s Quartet Bar on 27 May.

Adelaide Festival Centre CEO & Artistic Director Douglas Gautier AM: “This autumn we will celebrate live music in all its manifestations, and what better place to do this than Australia’s only UNESCO City of Music. We are also very proud to be the venue for some fabulous Adelaide Festival shows along with performances by home companies State Opera South Australia, Windmill Theatre and the State Theatre Company.”

The Festival Centre’s inSPACE – a program supporting grassroots, independent South Australian artists – will present FEMME by award-winning Adelaide choreographer/dancer Erin Fowler in the Space Theatre from 29 April to 2 May, while Adelaide Festival Centre’s popular Something on Saturday program will feature children’s show When the Mirror Bird Sings in the Space Theatre on 4 April.

Erin Fowler will perform FEMME at Adelaide Festival Centre. (Photo Credit: Chris Herzfeld, Camlight Productions)

For visual art enthusiasts, free exhibitions include 60 Years of Adelaide Festival in the Festival Theatre foyer from 28 February to 27 March and coinciding with 150 Psalms – Photo Exhibition in the Festival Centre’s QBE Galleries.

Thanks to a partnership with experience management company Qualtrics, opted-in ticket buyers will be surveyed through a new market research tool, Core XM. This new methodology helps Adelaide Festival Centre understand its audiences better, respond to feedback in a more agile way and continue to deliver excellent service to valued patrons.

The Autumn 2020 brochure can be found at Adelaide Festival Centre, around the city and at adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au

Adelaide Cabaret Festival (5 – 20 Jun)

Adelaide Cabaret Festival turns 20 this year and to celebrate we are back in the Festival Theatre with The 20^th Anniversary Variety Gala! Adelaide Cabaret Festival Artistic Director Julia Zemiro and previous Artistic Director David Campbell will co-host a night of fast-paced cabaret vivaciousness, reliving past festival highlights with cabaret favourites and fresh faces performing their best.

Adelaide Cabaret Festival Artistic Director Julia Zemiro (Photo Credit: Diana Melfi)

This year’s festival will also be a celebration of all things French as Adelaide Cabaret Festival presents A French Soiree – a four-day sensory spectacle in the middle weekend (11-14 June) celebrating France as the home of cabaret.

Headlining that weekend in an Australian premiere, leading stars from Broadway, the West End and Australia will gather to celebrate the musical theatre songs of legendary writers Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg in Do You Hear The People Sing?

Featuring world-famous tenor Alfie Boe (Les Misérables) and Tony and Olivier Award winning musical theatre star Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon, Les Misérables) – also a Disney Legend for her performances as Princess Jasmine in the animated film of Aladdin and Fa Mulan in Mulan – the concert will include hits from Les Misérables and Miss Saigon as well as Martin Guerre, The Pirate Queen and Frances’s first rock opera La Révolution Française.

Lea Salonga will perform in Do You Hear The People Sing?

Musical theatre super fans can check out the Adelaide exclusive In Conversation with Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alfie Boe and Lea Salonga – hosted by incomparable MC Julia Zemiro.

Francophiles will be swept away by French cabaret chanteuse Caroline Nin who returns to the festival with her new show Barbara, la dame en noir.  The femme fatale’s bilingual show pays tribute to French poet and melancholic singer Barbara with songs of love, drama and power.

RocKwiz returns in 2020, this time in a New York State of mind in RockWiz Salutes New York at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Festival Theatre. Julia and Brian Nankervis along with the RocKwiz Orkestra will be joined by fabulous cabaret and rock musicians and bring you tunes from some of New York and Broadway’s finest and of course the quiz!

In a world premiere and Adelaide exclusive, US musicians Davina and the Vagabonds will bring New Orleans charm, Memphis soul and sassy swing tunes to the Dunstan Playhouse. With a voice compared to a meld of Etta James, Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin, Davina and her band are sure to raise the roof!

The critically acclaimed West End hit SIX The Musical will smash open the doors at the new Her Majesty’s Theatre as part of Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s 20^th program. A witty, pop-fueled musical drenched in satire and sass, SIX remixes the history of the six wives of Henry VIII – Britain’s notorious Tudor King – as they take the microphone to tell their stories: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr.

SIX The Musical is coming to Her Majesty’s Theatre (Photo Credit: Idil Sukan)

Adelaide Cabaret Festival Artistic Director Julia Zemiro: “It’s been a delicious labour of love looking back at all the artists who have been part of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival story.

“The best of Australian and International Cabaret have cooed, wowed, jazzed and stomped the stages of the Adelaide Festival Centre and there are so many stories to tell.

“2020 will be a year of celebration of the past, the present and also turn the page on the next chapter…”

Adelaide Festival Centre CEO & Artistic Director Douglas Gautier AM: “This year’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival will be our most exciting program yet with a celebration of the last twenty years and a precursor for the next twenty.  

“We are also thrilled to announce our distinct French flavoured weekend which will include renowned French artists and composers, as well as performances by South Australian artists inspired by the culture of France. 

“Julia Zemiro’s creative vision will continue to delight our cabaret devotees and newcomers alike.”

The world’s biggest and best cabaret festival gets underway from 5-20 June 2020.