★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Heaps Good Productions. Ayers House. 27 Feb 2026
On this evening Adelaide audiences trembled slightly and awaited the deluge. It was the Friday evening we had been promised great rains and there was anticipation. Were we to get a flood of biblical proportion? It seemed appropriate.
We are joined by an old woman, hunched and walking with a cane. Dressed in pre-Victorian period costume, this is Mary Anning the Elder (Michele Kelsey), wise and worn out, our narrator for the evening. She is joined by Mary In The Middle (Mia Ferraretto), who is the young woman who clambers across the cliffs of Lyme Regis uncovering ‘curiosities’, fossil ‘thunderbolts’ and ‘fairy hearts’ to sell to keen tourists. The two are joined by young Mary Anning, a precocious 11 year-old (Adele Binns), who explains she was struck by lightning as a child and it ignited her passion (so to speak). It should be noted this is the accepted story of Mary Anning, it being difficult to flesh out the picture with accuracy, though writer and producer Michael Mills has a near encyclopedic knowledge of the topic.
This then is the story of the English geologist Mary Anning, told in stages, and by means of a musical. Yes, her story is the basis of the 2020 Kate Winslet movie Ammonite. Here there are three Mary Annings on stage, it’s a theatrical device and for the most part it works. The three burst into song, and are in good voice, working well together. Adele is at times a little shrill, but this is a question also of sound balance, which is at time underpowered, yet the piano recordings which accompany seem to chatter the melody. But this is a Fringe show, the costumes seem excellent, the set design simple, and the performances are of high quality.
There are problems. Most are structural rather than in the performance and they are important. How do you tell the relatively obscure story of a woman from over 200 years ago who lead the science of paleontology, so new a field that it had no name? Not through song, evidently, because key concepts remained obscured or were unheralded. The problem here was one of focus: Anning was apparently wedded to her geological hammer and the fact she discovered a trove of dinosaur skeletons (and thus hitherto unknown species) seems to be made a sidenote. The central prop is a beautifully painted representation of the Plesiosaur fossil embedded in its [rock] matrix and yet very little is made of it. Oh, for some focus lighting! Periodically Mary In The Middle picks up a brush and gives it a desultory sweep.
What is needed is less song and more detail, but here’s the rub. The writer knows his history, is entranced by a minor historical figure and determines she should be made famous, but how to set the historical context? To my mind you cannot mention the Reverend William Buckland, the foremost English geologist of his time without making it clear he was the principal ‘Deluge-ist’ of his time, a strong proponent of the Biblical tale involving a flood and an ark. Likewise, you cannot allow Anning to casually mention Baron de Cuvier (the Frenchman was the most eminent anatomist and scientist of his time bar none) without explaining how important a part he plays in this story.
And yet, fifteen minutes after we are told the story of Lightning Mary, we are back at that same point, the song is sung and hammers flourished. I get that it becomes a motif, but at the end of the show we know it’s the end of the show because the song is given a reprise. This interrupts a powerful original narrative since we are invited to overlook the death of Mary Anning as a logical endpoint in the story.
Mary Anning died in 1847 at the age of 47, worn out by a life a near grinding poverty, thus missing Mr Darwin’s famous treatise on Natural Selection by a mere decade. Why do we not know this fact, concentrating instead on holding a hammer aloft? It is an artifice, and twee at that.
This is not a bad show, despite the criticism. Indeed, with some minor tweaks and some more narrative (y’know, the part where the story’s told) it would be a very fine show. Or, as I overheard one person say, “You don’t need a whole song about a dog, do you?”
Alex Wheaton
When: 25 Feb to 21 Mar
Where: Ayers House
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. April Albert. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 27 Feb 2026
The whole David Hasselhoff concert at the Berlin Wall before it fell in 1989 has almost been erased from history. But the footage is there. A bizarre melange of pop culture and politics in which the Hoff offered his most disturbing, cringeworthy performance of a dying career.
April Albert maxes out this near forgotten moment of political cringe in Kapitalism is Your Friend.
Albert plays Franzi, an East Berliner who suffered a fall celebrating the wall’s demise, ending up in a 30 year coma. She wakes to a world in which promises of freedom and capitalism so eagerly sought during the days of the DDR, have arrived. How does she find it?
Franzi’s adoration of David Hasselhoff has reached religious level. There’s a little suitcase shrine to him. There’s also a massive double reflection photo of him adorning the wall of stage left. Franzi is Lycra clad, 80s pop loving and in amazement at the free modern world. She creates an aura of the sickly, icky commercialised 80s the shift in post DDR East Germany adopted world-wide. We recognise it, inwardly laugh, cringe at it, but Albert ensures by her performance of Franzi as innocent, critically unaware in the initial stages of the show so that’s as far as we take it.
The joy of the little “electronics” (mobile phones) that let you connect to everyone anytime is her greatest fascination. It’s the point the work starts to get beyond the idea that the end of history was reached when capitalism defeated the DDR and the wall fell.
This crazy East Berliner lives in two minds about life in the communist DDR and capitalism. Slowly but surely, reconciling the two becomes suddenly a lot harder than expected. Those electronics and being able to twit with “hashtags” suddenly get her thinking a little differently as she recalls how human beings surveilled people in the DDR. The electronics do it too, don’t they? What does being‘content’ mean? It’s freedom, isn’t it? That’s capitalism as friend, Ja?
Kapitalism is Your Friend mixes comedy and disturbing considerations brilliantly. It puts political realties smack bang in the middle of the distracting toys of 21st Century capitalism. Overwhelming aura of nostalgia the work entails is so awkward you’re forced to think again.
David O’Brien
When: 21 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Lauren Hance. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 26 Feb 2026
Vera Lauren Hance has an issue. Becoming a Nun. We’re invited to sit in on that conundrum. It involves losing vibrators for faith, amongst many things.
Holy O is an interactive experience. Audiences are made well aware of this, the rules that apply, and the fact their role is as Saints. Sparkly gold pipe cleaners were provided to us pre-show to create our saintly orb, pop it on your head, and you’re good to go.
The stage and seating area are strewn with clothes. An open travel case sits upstage half full. A solo chair occupies centre stage and there’s a small clothes hanger with one or two items on it.
Vera herself is crashed out on the floor in black bra and pants. Her clock alarm goes off. Once she realises what time it is she must decide what to wear? Oh, and wow, there’s this audience watching her with gold halo orbs on their heads. An audience of Saints! Saints she can appeal to! Does she ever.
We, the audience of Saints, chose what Vera wears. Our choices bring forth tales of people in Vera’s life. Clothing items become memories of people from her time as a teacher, midwife, and gynaecological nurse. This is intermingled with her bizarre journey in religious faith, and battles with the Nuns in the order she’s joining, who live near her.
Holy O is one wonderfully quixotic collection of tales, all of them wickedly risqué, but filled with an unmistakeable, vulnerable humanity matching Vera’s own quite challenging, yet endearingly confused personality in search of prayers, for those long-lost people. Plus blessings on the clothes selected to be rejected for their service.
The gift of the show is its dual layers of pop psychology ‘Christianity’ and deeper need to find a lost identity by making peace with all of the darkly comic tragedy littering Vera’s life.
For the Saints, it’s quite a funny, quirky experience. The innate light-hearted, but fiercely focused nature of Hance’s performance makes this sense of unserious playfulness totally plausible and acceptable. Keeping that balance in play ensures the work never goes to the depths of unbearable despair or to an unbelievable level of ridiculous levity.
David O’Brien
When: 19 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios, The Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Ayers House. 27 Feb 2026
Wiesenthal is based on the life and work of Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who became internationally famous for doggedly hunting down and bringing to justice nearly 1,100 Nazi war criminals. (This was only about 5% of the number he ‘had on his books’).
The play is set in his office on his last day at work before going into retirement. He invites one last group of students into his office (we the audience) and recounts his life’s work in tracking down history's most infamous and despised murderers.
Wiesenthal was written by American playwright Tom Dugan who has been nominated for the New York Drama Desk Award, New York Outer Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Ovation Award, and has won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Wiesenthal.
Christopher C Gibbs plays Wiesenthal to perfection. He is an experienced actor who has clearly studied his subject, and he provides us with a compelling visualisation of Wiesenthal’s passion and humanity and of the conviction and drive that compelled him to do what he did for so long. Gibbs addresses the audience throughout—in some sense there is no ‘fourth wall’ at all—and we feel totally involved in his every move and every word. Even when a stage prop fails, and Gibbs wryly confesses it to the audience and momentarily takes us ‘out of the moment’, it’s still Wiesenthal talking to us. Gibbs has command and class.
The story of Simon Wiesenthal’s work is well known, and the action of the play follows him as he vividly recounts details how various Nazis were tracked down and apprehended, and the nature of their vile crimes. This reviewer has recently completed reading a ‘new’ history of the Holocaust (prompted by having seen the excellent film Nuremberg featuring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring) and thought that he couldn’t be shocked any more, but Dugan’s detailed and biting text, coupled with Gibb’s exquisite storytelling and polished characterisation, shocks you all over again. The audience is outraged into extended disbelieving silence.
Why tell the story of the Holocaust again? As Wiesenthal says, because we must never forget. Because, as Churchill once said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Because, it is human nature to largely remain fixed in our behaviours and the direction of humanity’s moral compass needs to be constantly questioned.
Wiesenthal lived in dangerous times. So do we.
This is gripping theatre that matters.
Kym Clayton
When: 27 Feb to 8 Mar
Where: Ayers House
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. South Australian Maritime Museum. 26 Feb 2026
PYRATES! is a chamber musical about… well, pirates… and being performed aboard a ketch inside the SA Maritime Museum creates atmosphere that the show seriously needs. AI-generated images pertinent to the show’s narrative were projected on the ship’s sails.
According to the shows’ publicity material, the action follows the “true(ish)” story of English mariner John Husk who finds himself set upon by pirates and subsequently pressed into their service. John subsequently enters a love tryst which results in tension and swashbuckling belligerence before a resolution emerges.
There are only three in the cast, including Jassy Husk (a descendant of John Husk) who is also the principal creative behind the show. She co-wrote the music, arrangements, and the script. The show has toured the Perth and Sydney Fringes with varying actors playing the other roles. Local opera singer Adam Goodburn was billed to perform in the Adelaide production but was replaced for an unstated reason on opening night.
The cast are clearly all trained singers, and apart from the (uncredited) male cast member, they projected clearly in the cavernous and echoey space. The musical accompaniment is enjoyable, but because of the appalling acoustics in the performance space, much of its nuance is lost, as is the clarity in the speaking and singing voices. Because the work is almost completely sung-through, the audience relies on the clarity of the singing to understand the narrative. Sadly, it was not possible.
This would be an enjoyable show if performed in a venue that assists rather than thwarts sound production.
Kym Clayton
When: 26 Feb to 28 Feb
Where: South Australian Maritime Museum
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au