★★★★★
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
Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 27 Feb 2026
Forty years ago, Adelaide Festival director Anthony Steel was under the gun with controversial apprehension erupting about Shakespeare's Richard III being performed in the Georgian language by the Rusteveli Theatre Compay from Tbilisi.
But when Ramaz Chkhikvadze strode the stage, Adelaide recognised it was seeing one of the greatest living actors of his time and Shakespeare was still Shakespeare in Georgian. And it was wonderful.
Anthony Steel was in the opening night audience for Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in Korean and perchance he was having a shadow of À la recherche du temps perdu (remembrance of things past). I was.
Surely the shrill breakneck torrents of Korean delivery could not be compatible with the dark European passions of Chekhov’s characters?
And how very strange they turn out to be in the 2026 Festival’s centrepiece presentation of Simon Stone’s The Cherry Orchard from the Korean LG Art Centre.
Indeed, the audience struggles to keep pace with the rapid-fire and often strident cadences emanating from the actors as they banter and bicker and party through the final days of the family’s home - no longer a Russian rural property but a modern Seoul world. They are voluble characters with potent politics to convey in mighty highbrow speeches as well as family purposes and cross-purposes. Identifying the actors whilst also reading the surtitles is almost an acrobatic attention battle.
But, as with the phenomenon in Georgian, the might of the actors and the emotional complexity of the play unhinge the language barrier and it is Chekov which arises from this seemingly contrary context.
And at the grand denouement, acclaim is in the air, and the audience rises to its feet.
One has loved and hated Doyoung Song, the mother, played by multi-award-winning actress Doyen Jeon, as she conflicts and resolves with her children. One has disdained and pitied Hyunsook Kang, her adopted daughter, as played by the wonderful Moon Choi, albeit both performers’ voices sometimes invoke angry chickens. Korean and English tonals seem at times so vastly different; less so among the men of whom Haesoo Park shows his matinee idol qualities in portraying Doosik Hwang, the chauffeur’s son who has risen to the heights of wealth and success to supersede his former superiors. He performs one scene smoking a victory cigarette which is a triumph just in itself.
The set by Saul Kim is almost Ikea on steroids, an A-frame modern architectural wonder steepled in stairs up and down which the actors scamper with enviable ease and alacrity. An upstairs bedroom reveals private scenes of love and generational restlessness while the broad downstairs open plan accommodates the highs and lows of family life. Sliding glass doors are wielded as action uses the stage at large, the characters seeming tiny on its scale, sometimes even perched on the peak. Indeed, Stone plays the blocking with ever-gratifying aesthetic impact.
There’s soundscape, too, of course, mirroring the highs and lows of the narrative and a fascinating black “snowfall” which coats the stage as the moods collide.
It is a handsome, uneasy work, daring a la Stone, and for lovers of Chekhov, both puzzling and demanding,
Therein, of course, it sits as a classic Festival piece, to be implanted in the city’s arts memory.
Meanwhile, Festival Centre CEO Kate Gould’s new foodie policy is being met with astonishment by patrons unready to meet the clever quickie snacks on sale with or without pre-order around the foyer. And then there are those thrilled to find fine dining up and running in the new Angry Penguin restaurant.
It is all a hub happening with a verve and vigour it has not seen in many a year.
Samela Harris
When: 27 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au