Adelaide Festival. Slingsby Theatre Company. 22 Feb 2026

 

A tree once more becomes central focus in the second triptych instalment of Slingsby Theatre’s A Concise Compendium of Wonder.

 

Ursula Dubosarsky’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant is an enthralling tale in which the glorious tree of Wilde’s story takes on that significance of deep heart tied to the sense of life and hope children playing within it gain from it as we know it. The tree links them to each other, to nature, to a full life in a way an audience today knows, but doesn’t live it as societies did aeons ago.

 

The 1800s based work is redolent with creative means of the time. Simple ball games. Light projection screens of early pre photographic era form and shadow puppetry, wonderfully realised by Mark Oakley and Lighting Designer Chris Petridis. The cast of Nathan O’Keefe, Ren Williams and Elizabeth Hay are full of joyous gusto as they play, tell the story, and give life to puppets and unseen characters. Quincy Grant’s score is a delightfully keyboard led one of fun, much as it manages some deeper, darker moments.

 

The hint at what’s to come begins as you enter the space and are asked to put your hand into a memory box. Its interior is cold. These memories are given a number. Remember the cold.

Dubosarsky has written her play as a series of nine memories, each projected on a floor to ceiling scrim.

 

A tree is a whole world. An ecosystem. Bonding place. This is as Ada, a puppet little girl played by Elizabeth Hay knows and loves it. The girl who sits and listens to everything, hears what others cannot and befriends a little snail she names Quill after her little brother who died only hours after birth.

 

Director Andy Packer’s production is one in which storytelling becomes a blend of means enabled by Ailsa Paterson’s design.

 

Grey boxes open, light within them, revealing special props; little gardens, puppets, mini plants, a tiny version of Quill the snail, his shell lit up.

Means in which a little puppet Ada, aided by a human, gives life to a vulnerability only such a scale can give. Just as little Quill the snail does.

Against that is magnitude of the Giant. Booming voice. Thunderous presence. Terrifying tall walls of his home and the stone barrier he builds surrounding the tree he has banished the children from.

 

All this grace of emotional and physical scale is so gently but powerfully deployed to express a deep dilemma. Why do great truly giant forces need to covet and deny the very joy of life affirming nature and community?

How do you break through stone barriers, bring back warmth and hope. Restore connection between nature and humanity?

 

Ada’s brave choice to do so is a special kind of power. The smallest of humans finding a way that seems impossible. Led by a snail song, gift of nature. It is a beautiful thing to experience and ponder.

 

David O’Brien

 

When: 18 Feb to 15 Mar

Where: The Wandering Hall of Possibility

Bookings: my.adelaidefestival.com.au