Green Room: Cabaret Fringe faces chop, State Opera crosses borders
SA arts & culture news in brief.
State Opera’s Flute feat
Fresh off its three-night run of Jonathan Dove’s Flight, State Opera South Australia has announced the final two shows of its 2025 season.
First up, artistic director Dane Lam has spearheaded what’s been billed as the first major opera co-production between China and Australia with a new take on Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Premiering in Hong Kong this week, this co-production between State Opera, Opera Hong Kong and the Beijing Music Festival will hit Her Majesty’s Theatre from August 28 – September 6, directed by Shuang Zou and conducted by Lam himself.
Then in October, a new globetrotting take on Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers will premiere in Adelaide when Australian soprano star Siobhan Stagg headlines a locally-made take on Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette. Directed by Rodula Gaitanou and also starring Kyle Stegall and Morgan Pearse, this co-production with Irish National Opera and West Australian Opera will head west, and then north for a tour of the emerald isle.
It’s all part of a new direction for the company that Lam has dubbed ‘Opera Without Borders’.
“As we look toward our 50th anniversary next year, this season is about forging a new future by showing what opera can mean in the 21st century,” said Lam. “At its best, opera is the most collaborative of human endeavours. Through ambitious international and local partnerships, we at State Opera have reimagined classic works for contemporary audiences while creating new opportunities for South Australian artists and creatives. It’s opera without borders in action.”
Melbourne performer Frankly will appear in this year’s Adelaide Cabaret Fringe Festival. Photo: Supplied
Final curtain for Cabaret Fringe?
Hot on the high heels of Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s 2025 program announcement, its indie sibling the Cabaret Fringe Festival has also unveiled its upcoming winter season. Running from May 23 to June 1, the festival spans burlesque, circus, and comedy with over 30 shows across 20 venues. This year’s program highlights include Doom Box, a new show by Melbourne’s Frankly, Tash York’s Chaos Cabaret, and the fruity ventriloquism of David Salter’s An Evening with Granny Smith.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, with festival director Simone DiSisto revealing that it faces an uncertain future after its multi-year funding expired. DiSisto is rallying supporters and audiences to make the most of this year’s festival and help keep it alive to razzle dazzle another day.
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“For over 20 years, CabFringe has been the beating heart of Adelaide’s independent cabaret scene — fiercely open-access, proudly artist-led, and deeply community-rooted,” DiSisto said.
“We have weathered everything from venue closures to global pandemics, but without serious financial support, this could be our final act.”
Check out the full program, and how to support the festival, here.
Brian Castro. Photo: Arianna Dagnino
Castro for Miles Franklin longlist
The latest novel by celebrated Adelaide author Brian Castro has been recognised in the longlist for this year’s Miles Franklin Prize, announced on Thursday. Chinese Postman is Castro’s 11th novel, and far from his first brush with the Miles Franklin — his previous novels The Bath Fugues (2009) and The Garden Book (2005) were also shortlisted.
Australia’s most prestigious literary award carries a $60,000 windfall, with 10 books now in the running including Michelle de Kretser’s Theory and Practice, Siang Lu’s Ghost Cities and Tim Winton’s Juice. Also longlisted is Adelaide-born Melanie Cheng for her latest novel The Burrow — also on the shortlist for the Stella Prize.
“The limits of novelistic expression continue to be challenged in Australian letters,” said this year’s judging panel.
“This year’s field of Australian novels judged for the Miles Franklin Literary Award encompassed a sometimes dizzying variety of writing. From political fables to picaresque counter-histories, from taut Covid parables to heart-warming family chronicles, Australian life in all its multiplicity is on display in these novels.”
In an email to InReview Castro said: “This is my fifth long-listing … so no expectations … just holding a basket of warm eggs!”
The shortlist and winner will be revealed later this year, let’s hope one of Castro’s eggs hatches.
Read our review of Chinese Postman here.
Photo: Matt Byrne / Supplied
State Theatre lights a SPARK
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State Theatre Company South Australia has launched a fundraising drive to support its newly rebadged program for local independent theatremakers. Dubbed ‘SPARK’, it’ll take over from the existing Stateside program to offer artists a performance venue, rehearsal space, marketing support and mentorship from the State Theatre team.
Beginning in 2026, SPARK will mount two independent works in the main theatre of the Adelaide College of the Arts, presented as part of the State Theatre Company’s annual season. To help bankroll the initiative, State Theatre will next week launch a 12-hour fundraising drive which will see all donations tripled.
“SPARK is a space for fearless, unfiltered, electric theatre,” State Theatre Company artistic director Petra Kalive explained. “It’s a launchpad for the brave and the brilliant — it is a way to support independent South Australian theatre makers to realise their ambitious ideas — and my hope is that there are lots of new voices in that mix.
“We want to take the pressure off artists and put the focus back where it belongs: on making extraordinary theatre. Our job is to remove the obstacles and offer the support so artists can do what they do best: create.”
Theatre makers can submit expressions of interest until June 16
Chamber collective heads for the hills
This week UKARIA has played host to the ACO Collective, an ensemble that pairs young and talented Australian performers with members of the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra.
The residency has seen the collective’s emerging artists holed up in the Adelaide Hills with their ACO mentors to immerse themselves in chamber classics and newer Australian commissions.
On Saturday afternoon, audiences can take in the sum of their labours with a showcase concert mounted at UKARIA featuring work from Schumann, Shostakovich and Jakub Jankowski.
Learn more and book tickets here
Pia Gynell-Jorgensen’s Feet off the Pedals All the Way Down is a finalist in the 2025 Unley Art Prize
Unley Art Prize
The City of Unley has named the 25 finalists for the fifth iteration of its Unley Art Prize. The more-or-less biennial competition is open to artists of all experience levels, with the only condition being the common theme, ‘All Connections to Unley’. As a result, shortlisted artworks abound with references to suburban streets (Deb Rooney’s Accidentally Forest Street and Brenton Dreschler’s Thomas Street) and local institutions (Mary Catherine Hemingway’s cyanotype, Connections to Fullarton Park Community Centre).
This year’s competition was judged by Art Gallery of South Australia associate curator Gloria Strzelecki, Unley Museum curator Karen Paris, councillors Peter Hughes and Luke Doyle, and the council’s Cultural Development Officer Matthew Ives. The winner will be announced on Friday June 6, before all 25 finalists are exhibited at Hughes Gallery in the Fullarton Park Community Centre.
“This year we saw many new names in our finalist list, and some artists who have been shortlisted before, which demonstrates the reach of the prize and its importance within the local arts community,” Strzelecki said of the news.
“The exhibition will be an enticing, eclectic collection of works in a broad cross-section of media, including works created from found materials, collage and cyanotype. It was wonderful to see so many different techniques and conceptual responses to the theme. I congratulate all the finalists on their selection.”
In addition to a cool $5,000, the winner will score a place in the most prestigious art venue of all: splashed across public bins around the council area.
Check out the full list of finalists here
Green Room is a regular column for InReview, providing quick news for people interested, or involved, in South Australian arts and culture. Get in touch by emailing us at [email protected]