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Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Speaking with Artistic Director Julia Holt about the forthcoming Adelaide Cabaret Festival (the 2008 edition will be the eighth) proves to be a less than a revealing experience, if only because Holt is extremely guarded about what she wishes to tell me in advance of the official launch of the programme.
She likes to make announcements, as do her invited political guests for this evening's festivities, so she settles for rolling out just a few of the 'surprises' for the June festival.
"It should be fun - a Cabaret Festival is always fun - but being this close to the launch makes everything fun, and it makes things a bit more real to have them down on paper," she says brightly. Her hot tip, and you can take this as gospel since it comes from the Festival's Director, is that you "book your tickets early...
"Last year we had 67 sold out performances, and that was just an amazing result for us, so I hope it continues this year. So I really do recommend people book their tickets early. One of the main things we've been trying to do is to keep ticket prices low."
The whole Cabaret Festival kicks off this year with quite a bang: "For one thing it's the Queens Birthday long weekend, and we're also celebrating the 35th birthday of the Festival Centre that weekend, so it's going to be huge." An opening night spectacular is Rhonda Burchmore in her new extravaganza 'Everybody Loves Rhonda', featuring a 20 piece orchestra, dancers and special guests.
"We have international artists coming from France and the USA, the UK and The Balkans, along with the Australian performers we've chosen to be part of the programme - there's a special new show with Jeff Duff, teaming up with Geoff Wilson [he used to be very well known as part of the Wilson Daly big band] with a ten piece horn section. They'll be doing some classics like Georgia On My Mind and Love Is In The Air," she says enthusiastically of a performance which will be in the Playhouse.
"What we usually aim for is a mix of new and old, introducing our artists to Adelaide in one season, and quite often inviting them back for another festival." Partly, she suggests with a laugh, "...that's for people who don't get organised the first time around."
For another absolute highlight, there's an unusual twist in the air, with a performance which became a TV and then a YouTube smash hit, the Raymond Crowe performance (errr, hand puppetry?) based on the Louis Armstrong song What A Wonderful World. If you've seen it - and millions have - you'll know exactly what I'm speaking of. "Raymond likes to refer to himself as an unusualist," Holt tells me. "He uses shadow puppets, he has been on the Letterman Show in the US, and he's absolutely brilliant. You'll see he'll been practicing since he was very young...
"All up we'll be presenting ten brand new shows for this year's Cabaret Festival, so it's going to be great!"
Alex Wheaton
The Adelaide Cabaret Festival runs from Fri 6 to Sat 14 June and the full programme is launched on Wed 2 April.
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