Adelaide Show Grounds. 12 Jun 2024
Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia is a kaleidoscope of vibrant colours, intricate costumes, and gravity-defying performances. It is a mesmerising homage to the spirit of Mexico, rich with cultural symbolism and vibrant imagery. The 38th production since 1984, Luzia first premiered in 2016 and is the second tribute to the richness of Mexican culture – the first being Joyà in 2014.
Nestled within the infamous Cirque du Soleil ‘big top’, audiences discover a circular stage, replete with a veritable garden of Cempasuchil flowers (Yellow, or Aztec Marigolds). This is a stage designed for performance in the round, and when it revolves it ensures a prime view for every seat in the house.
“Fasten your seatbelts” we are told, as the lights dim; a solitary skydiver descending from the big top’s apex. It is Eric Koller – physical comedian and clown – parachuting into our hearts and minds. Arguably the heart and sole of Luzia, Koller weaves his simple narrative throughout the production, showcasing his impeccable timing and a boundless expressive range.
The dreamlike world of Luzia is then brought to life by Olivia Aepli as the ‘Running Woman’. She is accompanied by a majestic metallic horse puppet which dominates the stage and commands our attention. Aepli, clad in a stunning, expansive costume of the monarch butterfly, spreads her enormous butterfly wings and signals the beginning of our migratory journey.
An exhilarating ‘Hoop Diving’ performance follows where the cast, dressed as vibrant hummingbirds, bring the stage to life with spectacular tumbling and impeccable timing. Each performer soars and twists through the hoops with breathtaking precision, their feathered costumes creating the illusion of a flock in flight.
Then, in ‘Adagio’ – which is a nod to the golden age of Mexican cinema - the ‘flyer’ (Naomi Zimmerman / Anastasia Gorbatyuk), with the utmost poise and unwavering trust, places her life in the hands of her three ‘porters’ (Roberto Carlos Freitas Grispach, Anton Glazkov, Krzysztof Holowenko), creating a breathtaking display of human connection and courage. Each hand-to-hand throw and catch is testament to the profound trust and teamwork of the performers as she is flipped and hurled through the air; the elegance and grace, perfectly juxtaposed with real danger and genuine risk. There are no safety nets here, folks. No crash mats to catch a fall.
Tall, dominating cacti are silhouetted against the setting sun as Enya White then takes to the trapeze in a sensual collaboration with a cyr wheel artist (Sarah Togni / Shena Tschofen) amongst a cascading waterfall that descends from the heavens. Together the women create a seamless blend of strength and fluidity, each swing and spin echoing the rhythm of the falling water. The water becomes part of their dance as the droplets leap from their spinning and swinging bodies.
The name ‘Luzia’ is actually a fusion of two Spanish words that mean ‘light’ and ‘rain’, both core elements in this show’s creation. The lighting is exceptional throughout, but at this early stage we have barely scratched the surface where the water is concerned.
Koller returns with beachball and whistle in hand. It is clowning at its best as he takes the audience on an epic storytelling journey with nothing but his skilful expressions and the aid of the whistle. The audience are putty in his hands, just begging to be shaped and manipulated.
Then continuing the theme of the beach, and re-enforcing 1920s Mexican cinema, strongman Ugo Laffolay demonstrates his exceptional physical strength and balance atop a dangerously tall stack of hand-balancing poles. Then footballers, Abou Traoré and Igo Da Silva Matos wow us with their exceptional soccer ball juggling abilities in a nod to the highly celebrated Mexican sport. They kick, flip, spin, and even breakdance(!) with consummate skill.
When Koller again returns, shortly before intermission, to take on the ‘rain’ and attempt to fill his drink bottle, everyone in the house is left in stitches. Impressively, the shower of water begins to depict elements of the native flora and fauna of Mexico.
After intermission the set continues its transformation. Luzia is filled with references to Mexican cinema, art, handicraft, religion and history including a giant suspended orb that features as a major part of the set and is variously lit or projected onto throughout the production. It is affectionately titled the ‘Disk of Luzia’. The disk is said to reference the sun, the moon and the Aztec calendar.
The following performances of ‘Masts and Poles’ and then Krzysztof Holowenko’s 360 degree rotation on a giant swing wearing a luchador mask continue the Mexican themes. Though the production’s emotional pinnacle is reached, however, when Jérome Sordillon takes to the Aerial straps, as singer Majo Cornejo elicits spine tingling tones with her exceptional vocalisations.
Sordillon, representing a “demigod of rain” emerges on the aerial strap from a pool centre stage. The pool references a naturally occurring Mayan sinkhole which were believed to be “gateways to the afterlife”. Sordillon performs a mesmerising dance with a life-size panther puppet brought to life by puppeteers, Gerardo Ballester and Andrii Lytvak, in a performance where man and beast seem to become one. Here, the sequencing, choreography, production values, and music are so perfectly executed as to be emotionally overwhelming! It is indeed a spectacle to behold.
With this hard act to follow, Ivan Do-Duc has his work cut out, but does not fail to amaze with his tricks on the bicycle. Then contortionist, Aleksei Goloborodko, divides the audience, with many turning to look away as he demonstrates almost unnatural levels of flexibility. One sits in astonishment, marvelling at Goloborodko’s exquisite control and balance as he twists and bends into seemingly impossible shapes.
The closing act, entitled ‘Swing to Swing’ brings home the ever-present danger for this troupe of performers, as not one, but three, fail to land complex flips between apparatus. It is a chilling reminder – and not the first of the evening – of the courage and sheer will these talented individuals bring to bear each and every night.
As the evening draws to its conclusion and the artists take their bows, many of the opening night audience spring to their feet in a round of well-earned adulation. This is a night much loved by those in attendance, and one I suspect many will speak of for days and weeks to come.
Get in on the experience. This is not a show to be missed.
Paul Rodda
When: 9 Jun to 7 Jul
Where: Adelaide Show Grounds
Bookings: cirquedusoleil.com
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Quartet Bar. Isobel Marmion, Caitlin Ellen Moore and Kidaan Zelleke. This show is a work in progress. 9 June 2024
Pop culture may soon have a new buzz word – ‘Bumbling’.
Bumbling began life a few years ago as an Adelaide Festival Centre InSpace project.
It’s a quirky blend of immersive theatre, guided Adelaide pub crawl tales, pop fizz tragicomic rom com, and a large dash of bee science.
Bee science is a very, very important element. Keep bumble(ing)bee in the back of your mind. An insect social anthropology project sort of thing.
Got it? Ok.
Isobel Marmion is pumped, dancing about in a pink clubbing dress as the audience saunters in. She is a total 90s chick.
When the show starts proper, out comes a script dripping with the best rom-com style, new writing in ages. Marmion endears herself to the audience instantly.
This off beat, sweet, bee loving girl had her heart broken on Valentine’s Day by a guy she’s been heavily into while he’s been heavily, unwillingly into her. She buys 11 books on bees the next day, and decides the audience are going to help her have a ‘recovery night’.
We are informed St Valentine is patron of lovers and beekeepers. Ah, a plot point begins to form and so gradually thicken.
Search for love, cruising Adelaide’s pubs and clubs with gal pals, is quietly hooked to the social behaviour of bees, their ‘hive’ as the show progresses.
What else is love, but sweet nectar? What else is a bunch a girls on the town but a swarm of happy bees seeking good times while maintaining the hives social status quo?
Marmion beautifully articulates a sense of herself as a vulnerable little bee subject to the joys and dangers they face from the environment they find themselves in.
Keeping things interesting, Marmion always has her mobile phone at hand. Despite doing a show! The heartless guy actually sent a text! Audience members are selected to mind the phone and told to stop the show if he replies!
Kidaan Zelleke’s direction is smoothly understated. Roaming the space and mastering the production’s pace is key to its success given how pivotal audience involvement is.
Successfully meshing the audience with the work itself is the hidden genus of Bumbling in its current form.
What is Bumbling? Seeking the nectar of night life, club to pub, as flower to flower!
David O’Brien
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Quarter Bar
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Jun 2024
It’s easy to wax lyrical about Kate Miller-Heidke. I’ve seen her a few times over the years, and not only does she never disappoint, she’s now ageing like a fine wine. Sometimes brittle in her early years, she has developed into a mature and oh-so-smooth entertainer, one of Australia’s most iconic and revered female artists. There, I’ve gone and waxed again.
While operatically trained, Miller-Heidke has always given the nod to a broad range of contemporary musics, and tonight was no exception, as we opened with a blast of AC-DC. Short-lived, but funny.
The set opened with Fire and Iron, and as she sang of the love and life lost, you could hear a pin drop. But bar for the susurration of pleasure that seeped through the theatre, no-one was moving.
This is a pared back show, essentially Miller Heidke and music director / accompanist and life partner (baby daddy?) Keir Nuttal on acoustic six string guitar. She’s joined on a number of songs by vocalist Jess Hitchcock (whose own show A Fine Romance opens on June 13). It’s the sparseness that allows the songs to really shine through and showcase the basics – Miller-Heidke and Nuttal’s playing and arrangements. At times there’s an intimacy between them that almost feels like we’re intruding, such is the subliminal communication between them.
Miller-Heidke is a storyteller but they’re not always the beginning-middle-end kind of narrative. Songs like Sarah, which tells of a young woman who was drugged and abducted from a music festival, leaves us hanging; what happened? Sarah has no memory, and the guilt seems to lie more with Miller-Heidke than the abductor – how could she have let this happen to her friend?
A quick foray into Muriel’s Wedding the Musical, which Miller-Heidke wrote with Nuttal, has the audience chuckling through Amazing; this was an opportunity for Miller-Heidke and Hitchcock to have a lot of fun with their vocal duet, and fun they had!
Miller-Heidke has a dry sense of humour, and she’s not afraid to poke fun at herself and drop in a self-deprecating comment, as evidenced by the story of her first single and the comments from ABC listeners, one of whom never wanted to hear it again. Unfortunately he was the only caller…
Pulling us back to the personal, we are jolted with a song about “dancing on the grave of an arsehole”. The incredibly powerful You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore is visceral; the anger and rage Miller-Heidke feels about her childhood abuser is transmogrified to a powerful statement of survival and endurance. Who lives, wins.
Keir Nuttall is an absolute pleasure to listen to. While he exhibits great chord voicings, he is virtuosic in his leads and creates a room of sound with loops and popping rhythms, and the way these two work together with just keyboard and guitar is genius. This reaches its apotheosis in Humiliation with its extended solo and raucous outro.
Words gets an airing, as does the haunting Last Day On Earth and the always gut-wrenching Caught In The Crowd.
And course we couldn’t have a show without a nod to her Eurovision entry, or as English host Graham Norton described it, the “singing windscreen wiper”. For my money, Zero Gravity should have won the bloody thing – it had everything! Most of all, it’s a great song, and with Hitchcock and Nuttall joining in, she absolutely nailed it – again.
Talking Heads Psycho Killer ended out the set (interspersed with a bit of Stairway To Heaven from Nuttal) with a Paint It Black intervention and again we were treated to an impresario performance; the vocal gymnastics performed by Miller-Heidke left us in no doubt that she is at the top of her game, and we are the better for having been there to witness it.
The audience gave her a standing ovation. I’m generally a bit of a sceptic as to the veracity of most standing ovations in Adelaide; audiences appear to give them in grateful obeisance for having a good time, and there have been occasions where I feel I’m in a parallel universe. In this instance; brava.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 8 Jun 2024
New Zealand company A Slightly Isolated Dog (go figure!) give the iconic gothic story a sexy, high-camp, over-the-top, high-energy makeover while preserving the fundamentals of the story: “We all have a darkness in us, but we push it down”, which is the oft-said refrain of the hard-working cast. The large crowd in the Space Theatre, which has been turned into a black-box theatre replete with bentwood chairs, round tables and electric candles, are all up for a good time. Judging by the whoops, cheers, gales of laughter, and willingness to play along with the performers (and their silly faux-French accents, which really signals we’re in for a silly time!), the audience was not disappointed, but this reviewer was.
Some of the strengths of the show were also its weakness: a large crowd on a mostly flat auditorium floor, but they did not enjoy clear sightlines; an energetic, brash and engaging cast that simultaneously wanders amongst and works the crowd, but it’s too difficult to hear them clearly (depending on where you sat), and there was no amplification; a fast-moving episodic unfolding plot that depends crucially on audience participation, which is willingly given, but it can’t always be clearly seen or heard (it’s as much visual as it is aural).
Occasionally there is a powerful rendition of a song to underline the course of the narrative, such as Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, which is a cute spin on the conflicted mind of Dr Jekyll who loses (or finds?) himself when he becomes Mr Hyde. A rap trio is especially effective and well performed. But the musical numbers are probably less in number than would be expected in a cabaret performance, and the event more resembles a cross over between stand-up and improvised story telling with slap-stick physical theatre that would suit the Fringe Festival in an abbreviated form.
Much store is placed on highly impressive sound effects throughout the performance to underline words, action, and mood. The cast and the SFX operator have it down pat – the timing is exquisite, the sound quality and inventiveness is superb, and even the audience gets in on the act. One young fellow became an instant gun slinger and shot down the cast (and possibly other audience members!) in an impressive impromptu display of gangster gun slinging!
There is so much happening in this show. The pace is dizzying, and unrelenting – it’s almost flawed – and it’s difficult to leave the theatre without much more than having had a good laugh (which is an altogether good thing in these dismal times), and perhaps a nagging feeling that we all have darkness within, but we push it down.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Jun 2024
Standing ovation.
Fascinating Aida must be used to it by now. They are world-travelling super smarty-pants old-school satirists - and they come to the Cabaret Festival like a zephyr of diabolical eloquence.
These are erudite women, masters of their own dastardly lyrics, all three of them endowed with musical skills and showbiz chutzpah. One could fret about pronouns (as one does so much these days) but the Fascinating Aidas describe themselves as “queens”, albeit with mellifluously androgynous vocal range. They are hats-off fabulous, although perhaps not the entertainment fare for people not up with the zeitgeist of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Their references are wildly catholic and their targets met, bullseye, with a silver arrow.
They are Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson and Liza Pulman with newish chum accompanist Michael Roulston. For forty years Dillie and Adele have been at it with Liza a mere twenty. She’s the young one, lithe and high soprano.
They laugh in the face of the ghastly aging process singing that we are next in line and what a mess we’ve made of the world for the next generation and, by the way, we haven’t finished.
Their songs are expertly arranged, their harmonies tried and true, their self-written lyrics ever full of surprises for those not au fait with their work. Some songs such as Cheap Flights have been out online for seeming aeons and were among the entertaining comforts we all sourced during Covid lockdown. It is joy to hear it live as their encore.
Oh, the fun they have with a poke to provoke the woke. Oh, how silly they are in the botox send-up. Of course We Go Dogging is beyond risqué, but the Fascinatings are not the market for shy prudes or, for that matter, right wingers. Their bring-down of Trump brings the house down.
They’re comic bliss on steroids. They are Lehrer-esque with non-binary bells on.
If only their season could have gone on and on. One would have seen them again just in case one missed a glorious word.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed