★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Moa, Gluttony. 21 Feb 2026
Gasha is a high energy explosion of contemporary circus skills, vibrant colour, dazzling visual LED projections, and both recorded and live techno music, all assembled under the premise of celebrating modern Japanese culture in a multicultural and globalised world. (The cast of six included Caucasians and Japanese.) The very large audience was up for a noisy and jaw-dropping celebration and that’s exactly what they got, in bucket loads!
The plan to draw everything together under such a broad theme as ‘the culture’ of particular country works at a superficial level but doesn’t really hold up to closer inspection. The very best physical theatre/circus shows have a clear and compelling narrative that is evident to the audience, and although Gasha often ‘looks’ Japanese, it isn’t entirely apparent what the show is trying to say. There is no narrator or MC to help us along.
The show begins with a striking projection of a rising moon on a large backdrop which silhouettes one of the cast in a strong and static pose. The image is arresting; you momentarily hold your breath in anticipation of what is going to follow; the colour and lighting effects almost evoke fear and caution.
The first act gives us a woman suspended aloft by her hair as she rotates and gyrates at speed with unyielding fluidity. Again, you hold your breath and question whether she is safe? This is followed by another performer twirling multiple hoops in every which way with almost every part of her body. Such cleverness, and agility. Then a man shows strength, grace and timing as he makes a Cyr Wheel do seemingly impossible things with him in, on and around it.
This is seemingly all a warmup for more aerial antics with sashes and straps forced to submit to the will of lithe bodies that toss themselves around with abandon high above the stage as if gravity doesn’t exist and personal physical safety is not an issue. In moments of stillness, as the performers strike and hold poses with their bodies and straps bathed and sculpted by gorgeous light and colour, they form shapes suggestive of Japanese written script. Just stunning.
And then there are the obligatory balancing acts, but one of them has a distinct Japanese feel to it The performer works with four large parasols made from paper and bamboo, and… not to give anything away… balances all of them in seemingly impossible ways.
In between acts a solo musician plays a range of percussion instruments and what looks like a traditional Japanese Shamisen, except it has four strings (not three) and is tuned to sound much like a banjo. And of course it is electric, and he plays with the passion of a lead guitarist from any iconic western heavy metal band. He looks imposing dressed in his Japanese costume and his face painted as if in homage to David Bowie. He cleverly plays music that sounds oriental, but then its not, as it morphs into western riffs.
At the end the sun rises on a different Japan, and a body is again stunningly silhouetted in dazzling colour.
This show is such fun. The cast give generously of themselves ,and the crowd loves them for it.
Kym Clayton
When: 20 Feb to 22 Mar
Where: The Moa, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Marcel Cole. Courtyard of Curiosities, Migration Museum. 21 Feb 2026
Charlie Chaplin considered The Goldrush to be one of his finest works, so it seemed appropriate for Marcel Cole to open his homage to Chaplin with a condensed performance of this 1925 silent film. In the intimate space of the Chapel Theatre, treating the stage as a 3D film set with the movie screen as backdrop, is most effective.
Cole’s mime skills serve him well in his character creation; dressed as Chaplin’s famous Little Tramp’ replete with white face and toothbrush moustache, Cole inhabits the character effortlessly.
It’s a little jarring then, when he breaks the fourth wall and starts whispering to audience members, guiding them in stage moves and characterisations in the biographical part of his ‘interactive’ show. I’m not sure there’s another way to do this, but it’s initially odd all the same.
With so many characters required to inform his life story, Cole draws on various audience members to depict his mother, his wives, his brother etc, a device which of course has varying success, depending on the reaction and nous of those chosen. On this occasion, the choice for brother Sydney, after a shaky start, joined in with gusto, and clearly made a young man very happy to be part of the action.
Using a well-thumbed autobiography as his touchstone, Cole takes us through the highs and lows of Chaplin’s personal life and career, and the transition of the show from the silent era to ‘talkies’ is very effective, with Cole effecting a ‘terribly, terribly’ British accent, as did Chaplin in his talkies, which rather belies his boyhood which was shaped by poverty and workhouses.
There’s a lot of stage time devoted to The Great Dictator, Chaplin’s film in which he parodies Adolf Hitler. I’m still at a loss to understand the interpretive dance scene, in which Cole strips down to his underwear and tosses around a large white balloon whilst (skilfully) pirouetting and leaping about the stage, with gaff tape swastikas attached to his nipples. Art, eh? Reciting the closing monologue from the film, we are rudely reminded that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).
It’s a bit of a rush through the McCarthy era, the accusations of Communism and his eventual exile from the US, and his triumphant return to receive an honorary Academy Award, but Chaplin’s life was so extraordinarily full that it’s almost impossible to condense it within an hour. Cole makes a fair fist of it, and it ends strongly and yes, leaves one wanting more.
Cole was last here with Ukulele Man, telling the story of George Formby, and he brings quite a skill set—acting, dancing, mime, singing—to writing and presenting this biographical form of theatre. There is a lot more to come from this young man.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 19 Feb to 8 Mar
Where: The Courtyard of Curiosities, Migration Museum
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Arch. Holden Street Theatres. 21 Feb 2026
Why should you believe me? We all know the Peter Goers is my best mate. How could I find fault in his Fringe show? I never do.
Just as he does the show for the love of it and for the old faithfuls in his audiences, so do I annually pen a paeon of loving irrelevance.
Now on the eleventh of his “trilogy” of fringe shows, it feels like putting on a dear old slipper. Cosy, funny, predictable, good quality, value for money…and now, with the new seats in The Arch, even more comfortable.
Of course, as he notes, his audiences are dropping off - the perch. That's a wee bit of a problem when your demographic is the oldies, the “pre dead” as he insists on calling them. Or “us”, I should say. None of us expects to get old, dammit.
Goers has a lovely new high-end pinstripe suit for this new Fringe season. Hot off the Salvo’s racks.
And, as a raconteur, so to speak, believe it or not, he has a mass of new old stories.
So, he keeps us chuckling and guffawing for a very nice hour.
And, not one to hog the stage, he shares it with the inexhaustibly good-spirited Sandi McMenamin who does some spectacular twinkle-fingering on the keyboard. She brings the house down and then brings on Robin “Smacka” Schmelzkopf for song. Young at Heart, he sings. With gusto in that glorious voice. He can aways make an audience swoon.
And back to Goers it goes for a few more showbiz anecdotes and deft observations and, OMG, what a good punchline.
Over and out of 2026.
Can he do it again?
Never say die. Especially to oldies.
Samela Harris
When: 21 Feb to 22 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres, The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. CRAM. The Mill. 20 Feb 2026
There are people out there right now who are dealing with the impending loss of a parent, friend, partner, or child from an incurable disease. For some that journey is still happening. For some it is over, but their next stage of life without has begun.
Melissa Pullinger’s Meteors tackles her experience of losing her Mother to cancer. Her solo performance is a tremendously intelligent, very considered observation of what she and her family experienced, of what life becomes when something terminal comes to stay. Of what the ‘end’ really began.
Pullinger’s writing is so brilliantly measured, laced with humour dark and light, of understanding gained, of seeing where confusion was. She delivers it in performance with an aware honesty empowered by emotional honouring truth of moments remembered without schmalz, or false sentimentality.
Director, Connor Reidy paces the production perfectly in partnership with Will Spartalis’s deft sound score. With just one chair, two steps and careful light management, the world of Pullinger’s experience is perfectly presented.
The over arcing motif for the work is meteor showers, eclipses. Pullinger is fascinated by them. Her tales of sharing them out in Tea Tree Gully and the hilarious tale of scoring cheap eclipse glasses set a mood that’s inviting. That experience is ground point of her connection to her Mother after death. Of us all, carbon formed creatures we are.
What really gives a great sense of the journey’s length and depth at shows start is meeting a strange guy, not a serial killer looking type at The Exeter. It‘s a cracking scene, in which telling this guy her mother has died sends him into tears over the memory of his cat’s death. The ‘I know how you feel’ story. At that moment, she’s in control. Comforting him.
Before getting there, it was entering a new world, a different life. Filled with being seen differently. Hiding in the dark as new treatments turned her Mother’s skin to that of a vampire fearing light. Of cancer becoming not even noticed.
Dealing with the aftermath is core to this tale. The Dany DeVito look alike counsellor, the problematic seven stages of grieving theorem, getting on with life, whatever that is now.
It’s here Meteors really powers up as an explication of understanding and sharp comedy.
In many ways, living with her Mother’s impending loss became normal life, as bizarre as it actually was. A sense of ease within it is expressed.
The aftermath is being thrown out of the dark into sharp light. Confusing, frightening, unbearable. How to manage? How, very genuinely, to breathe again?
The best advice comes in the last lines of the work. An understanding gained. A simple one
against the complexity of the experience and journey.
David O’Brien
When: 19 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: The Breakout, The Mill
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Slingsby Theatre Company. The Wandering Hall of Possibility. 20 Feb 2026
“All trees are possible.” An incredibly foundational line from The Childhood of The World bound to echo throughout Slingsby Theatre’s richly ambitious triptych of works exploring 2,000 years of the world’s relationship with nature. A relationship explored through three writers reimagining of three very well-known fairy tales.
Jennifer Mills’ take on Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel is a dark and foreboding tale for the first triptych instalment. There’s a hint at a spirit of sparseness as the awaiting audience are offered strands of straw, asked to tie them together to create a long continuous strand. One person must be the keeper of the strands, placing them in the basket of the woman they find inside weaving (Elizabeth Hay).
It is a medieval 1300s like world, gripped by famine. Brother and sister Crann (Nathan O’Keefe) and Ré (Ren Williams) farm with their father yet are starving as all in the village are. When selected by lottery to become apprentices to the village, in ways unknown, their fears abound as to their future given the unknown fate of children gone before them, never to be seen again.
Mills’ writing is beautiful in its focus; tension, fear, frail hope against darkening despair, enveloping lost siblings in a forest of potential danger and hunger riven, her words are given to actors as story telling lines. The cast deliver them without attempting to impose themselves over the tale, but be in body and spirit frightened, searching, hopeful siblings they are. This has great impact, buoyed by Composer Quincy Grant’s score of madrigals, poetic dreamy strands of dulcet music played by the Horizon Orchestra.
Ailsa Patterson’s set and costumes are simple but effective in the circular hall. From the roof hangs dark webbed matting, through which Chris Petridis’s lighting transforms the stage into a place of nature. So steeped in the sense of a dark forest is the work, there’s a moment it literally comes to physical life.
The siblings escape from imprisonment is a moment in which they discover who each of them is as a person and where they are figuratively and personally.
This tension of fear, growth and understanding is so delicately managed by Director Andy Packer, Choreographer Lina Limosani, and supported spiritually by Composer Quincy Grant’s score. The appearance and disappearance of their late mother (Elizabeth Hay) in a dream sequence adds to sense of loss and search of safety, meaning.
Being discovered by a tribe of children who live safely and in plenty offers a conundrum. Stay or go? Return to father and hunger or stay in safety and abundance? There’s also the question of what this life challenge means. Because the children are bearing the brunt of those in the world wanting more than they need.
What do The Mother’s (leader of the children ensconced in a giant tree) words “all trees are possible” mean for the siblings? All children? The world?
This is a crucial question and challenge. Trees are things of nature. Having as many as possible is surely easy. But to qualify that by saying ‘are’ suggest that’s a choice that might not be taken.
David O’Brien
When 20 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: The Wandering Hall of Possibility
Bookings: my.adelaidefestival.com.au