What’s HOT at the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival

Adelaide Cabaret Festival Miss Behave photo by Dave PickensOpening tonight, the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival presents a 16 day spectacular featuring 150 performances, and starring more than 425 artists from Australia and worldwide. Arts Review takes a look at ten shows worth checking out!

The Birds
Space Theatre: 22 – 25 June 2016
The infamous globally acclaimed glamazons behind Glory Box and Burlesque Hour return to Adelaide with a brand-new gothic, erotic, airborne variety show. Edgar Allen Poe meets late night Paris. Offering a plumage shaking poetic seduction of dark torch songs, devil dance, wild tales and amazing feats of the aerial exquisite. Grand Guignol for the 21st century; you’ll plunge into a tumultuous and beautifully feathered world.

Dita Von Teese – Burlesque: Strip, Strip Hooray!
Festival Theatre: 13 & 23 June 2016
Dita Von Teese’s variety show has sold out multiple dates in major cities across the US including Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. This 90 minute spectacle will treat you to four of Von Teese’s most impressive performances, including her new Swarovski Martini Glass, along with a brilliant cast of Dita’s favourite burlesque acts from around the world.

Friends of Barbra
Artspace: 18 & 19 June 2016
Introducing the internationally renowned mega-cabaret boyband (Luke Gallagher, Michael Smallwood and Nigel Ubrihien) hand-picked by Barbra Streisand herself to keep her music alive for generations to come. Besides reviving Barbra’s iconic power duets, this award-winning trio breathe new life into classics by The Spice Girls, Luciano Pavarotti, The Brady Bunch, Kermit the Frog and many others.

Hard Rain – The Songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen
Space Theatre: 12 & 13 June 2016
One of the finest interpreters of song, Barb Jungr returns to perform the works of songwriting legends Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Impressing critics and audiences around the world with insightful, intelligent interpretations of well-loved songs combined with her powerful, witty performance style, Hard Rain reflects Jungr’s personal despair with the political times that we live in – interpreting favourites that resonate as strongly today as they did when they were originally written.

Hue Blanes and the Moon
Artspace: 16 – 18 June 2016
Conspiracy theorists believe the moon is a construction of man. And that when you fly to it, you discover it’s just a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out. Hue Blanes and the Moon isn’t funny because it’s serious. It isn’t original because every story has been told. And the songs won’t move you because all hearts have died. Penned and performed by the virtuosic Hue Blanes and directed by Travis Cotton, this master of melancholy will break your heart. Watch him take on the Pope, the Queen and of course God.

Lance Horne: First Things Last
Banquet Room: 19 June 2016
The insanely talented, Emmy award-winning composer, lyricist, performer, producer and music director Lance Horne will bring his signature cabaret flair to this year’s Festival. Taking time off from creating and collaborating with the likes of Alan Cumming, Rufus Wainwright, Pink Martini, Liza Minnelli and Kylie Minogue, Lance will premiere new works from upcoming projects and celebrate the Australian launch of his album First Things Last with special surprise guests. This is a unique opportunity to experience the styling of a heart-on-his-sleeve singer-songwriter up close and personal

Nailed It!
Artspace: 10 – 11 June 2016
A heartfelt and meaningful look at life, relationships, Hogwarts and plant genitalia. You’ll delight in this celebration of the insane, brutal and hilarious things we do when we’re in love – or falling out of love. Featuring the Green Room Award-winning original songs of Mackenzie-Spencer and Strano, Nailed It! reunites the team with director and long-time collaborator Casey Gould to bring you a show about love, loss and even coming to terms with your innate solitude.

Rumour Has It
Dunstan Playhouse: 23 – 25 June 2016
Naomi Price, Australian theatre star and Ricky Martin’s leading lady from The Voice Australia 2015, performs Adele with haunting accuracy offering a satirical glimpse behind the glossy veneer of this pop legend. Audiences across Australia have declared this to be a truly mesmerising bravura performance that both dispels and starts the rumours. Hear the mega-platinum hits including, Hello, Skyfall and Someone Like You, in a universally acclaimed homage to pop’s most loveable lass that is both cheeky and irreverent.

The Wharf Revue
Her Majesty’s Theatre: 15 – 18 June 2016
Over 15 years and 21 shows, Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott have mercilessly mocked all the usual suspects. We’ve watched Howard Tampa with refugees, Rudd give pennies from Kevin, Gillard refuse to be lectured by “that man”, “that man” scrap the carbon tax, stop the boats and – um – get the budget back into surplus… But no one has been able to outplay, outwit or outlast The Wharf Revue.

Yana Alana: Covered
Banquet Room: 24 & 25 June 2016
Yana Alana is infamous for her nude, rude and lewd cabaret appearances. In a risqué act of defiance this camp, bouffant, drag diva will appear on stage with her all-female band – fully clothed! A very special performance for those of us yearning for Yana to bear her soul but not her arse. Joined by The Paranas featuring Bec Matthews and Louise Goh with songs made famous by Nina Simone, Tom Waits, Shirley Bassey, Laurie Anderson and Joy Division.

The 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival continues to 25 June. For more information, visit: www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au for details.

Image: Miss Behave – photo by Dave Pickens