Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 21 Jul 2025
I love seeing young people confidently performing in the spotlight, owning the stage as if they've been doing it since they were born. Yet, as I left the Dunstan Playhouse filled with joy, I also felt frustrated and angry.
Class of Cabaret 2025, presented by the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and centrED at Adelaide Festival Centre, was a spectacular showcase of talent, colour, story, and soul. Eight of the sixteen young performers from this year’s cohort took to the stage in the 5pm show I attended—if even one of them doesn’t become a household name, then we as a state have failed them. Spectacularly.
Each student wrote and performed their own material (let’s just sit with that for a moment—wrote and performed—mentored by cabaret dynamos Millicent Sarre and Mark Oates, musically directed by Ciara Ferguson, and steered capably by director Brock Roberts and vocal coach Rosie Hosking.
After a rousing opening with Proud, by Heather Small (arrangement by MD Ciara Ferguson), “Seb” took us on a rollicking, hilarious excursion into the Australian Italian reverence for food that included a cannoli-flavoured rewrite of Proud Mary that made me laugh and followed it with My Way, sang his way—bold, cheeky, and wonderfully sincere.
Then there was Charlotte’s sharing of her existential crisis of having her birthday land on Christmas Day—a delicate, bittersweet slice of cabaret wrapped in tinsel and delivered with poise.
Angel’s sass-meets-soul treatise on parental boundaries, complete with original lyrics and a soaring presence injected a distinctly youthfully rebellious tone with a significant afternote: yes, she loves you—but she needs space. And possibly a national tour.
Dynamic Canadian Australian, Jack arrived with a big bang and his superb take on his “own myopic metaphysical view” of the world, nihilism, Trump and everything! Proclaiming himself “an absurdist” because he “forges his meaning from nonsense” he belted through Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life with infectious fervour. And he was funny! Very, very funny!
The set up for Gracie’s “autobiographical account of growing up with a sole father parent from age 9” began with examining a book entitled “Girlhood 101,” citing everything from body image, diet, menstruation and friendships as predictable speedhumps—that her bald forty-year-old English father would need to deal with! Her account of bra shopping with Dad was hilarious! Gracie’s dénouement defining family was deeply moving. My, what a voice!
The room’s temperature shifted with Ceridwen’s deeply personal, poetic climate crisis anthem, a call to action beyond the rhetoric by a very powerful presence on stage. Ceridwen’s generation has heard enough from Boomers and Gen Xers. Message received!
Ethan then gave us a slow, honest unpacking of masculinity through his own lived lens. This young person found a safe space, as so many kids do, in theatre and, in describing his experience, questions societal values around narrow notions of masculinity. Ethan’s stunning, honest rendition of Cyndy Lauper’s True Colours brought the audience and his fellow performers to tears.
Just when we thought we’d never laugh again, Ella arrived! This young performer oozes presence and pizzazz, qualities rare to find in one so young. Yet Ella’s clever scripting of her experience of learning to drive, complete with a hilarious account of negotiating the infamous Brittania roundabout, became a clever and effective metaphor for her tendency to overthink, revealing vulnerability not far below her confidence and sass. Ella’s rendition of I Will Survive was goosebump-inducing to say the least. This kid can sing!
As I mentioned, the show opened with Heather Small’s Proud and closed with the student-written anthem Euphoria.” I defy anyone to sit through these two numbers and not feel something stir in their chest.
Now. To pivot. Here’s the kicker—and where I swap my theatre glasses for my cranky taxpayer hat. These kids—these electrifying, stage ready, self-aware young performers—will likely have to leave South Australia to find work in their chosen field. Why? Because for all the shiny brochures branding us the “Festival State,” we remain a part-time patron of the arts.
Minister for the Arts Andrea Michaels recently announced $80 million for the Arts over ten years. $8 million a year across the whole sector. I’m all for a good footy match, basketball game, or car race but when even the Minister herself acknowledges the arts contribute over $1.8 billion annually to our economy, you’ve got to ask, where’s the logic?
Talent is here. Passion is here. Stories are ready to be told. The career pathways? Long-term investment? Still coming soon... maybe.
Class of Cabaret continues to be one of the most vital, exhilarating, heartwarming events on our arts calendar. And I’ll be there, in the foyer cheering but wondering why the kids have to go to Melbourne or London to become who they already are.
Bravo, Class of Cabaret 2025. You are the reason we keep the lights on.
John Doherty
When: Closed
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
