Adelaide Fringe Festival 2013

The 2013 Adelaide Fringe Festival, which runs unabated until Sunday March 17, got off to a fine start on Friday February 15 with an Opening Night Parade along King William St.

Robert Dunstan reports.

Threatened with cancellation earlier in the day due to the forecast of thunderstorms – the 2011 Opening Night Parade had been completely washed-out and had to be rescheduled later during the festival as a much smaller affair – the festivities were given the go-ahead late in the afternoon.

With the parade set to commence at 8.30pm, just as it was getting dark, street performers including Princess Justine kept the crowd entertained from 7pm while a thumping soundtrack, put together by Adelaide’s DJ Tr!p, filled the air and helped everyone get in the mood.

This year’s theme was Inside Out, with the participants, mostly artists and venues taking part in the festival along with assorted community groups, being encouraged to light up their float. For the first time the parade was audio described and broadcast live on Radio Adelaide for blind and vision-impaired people. Fringe ambassador Paul McDermott also added greatly to proceedings.

Port Adelaide Artists Forum members and friends won equal first prize for Best Float as they danced their way along King William St in the centre of the city to promote their Fringe visual arts exhibition New Found Love. PAAF's exhibition, which features guest artist Evelyn Roth and is running at Gallery Yampu, Jenkins St, Birkenhead on the edge of Port River, is all about recycling, so parade costumes were made from recycled materials including old helium balloons.

This year also boasts a record number of Adelaide Fringe events including over 100 cabaret shows, 32 circus and physical theatre shows, 107 theatre productions, seven film events, 197 concerts of a musical nature and over two dozen dance performances along with 105 visual art exhibitions. To add to this, there will also be 254 comedy events with international comics such as Fringe favourites Arj Barker and the UK’s Gordon Southern taking part.

UK comic Stephen K Amos commenced a preview run of his brand new show, The Spokesman, at the Governor Hindmarsh Hotel prior to Adelaide Fringe’s official opening night. The Spokesman has now moved to Angas St’s Arts Theatre for its season but will return to the Governor Hindmarsh on Sunday March 17 for a special late afternoon show from 5pm.

The Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, an award winning live music venue, will also be hosting a variety of Adelaide Fringe events that will include Bulmers Best Of The Edinburgh Fest at which three international comedians, the hilarious Jimmy McGhie and two of the UK’s hottest comics, Stuart Goldsmith and Carl Donnelly, will be performing. The venue will also play host to The Best Of The Fest Late Showfrom 10pm nights which will feature a surprise variety of Adelaide Fringe comics from around the world on Friday and Saturday nights.

Holden Street Theatres in Hindmarsh also boasts an impressive Adelaide Fringe program which has 17 shows that encompass theatre, dance, comedy and children’s events such as Shakespeare For Kids. Their extensive program also sees the return of award winning British play The Angry Man which took out two Fringe Awards in 2006, while award winning Edinburgh Fringe play Glory Dazed will be making its Australian debut. Penned by UK playwright Cat Jones, who will soon start as Playwright In Residence at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre in the UK, Glory Dazed is a gritty four-hander that tells the tale of former soldier Ray who has just returned from Afghanistan to find that his wife has taken up with his best friend. It runs at Holden Street Theatres for the duration of Adelaide Fringe and is a must-see theatre production.

England’s Guy Masterson is also returning to Adelaide Fringe with his astonishing and much-loved one-hander Animal Farm which he will presenting at Adelaide College Of The Arts in Light Sq for two now sold out performances. It will then move to Sydney’s Seymour Centre in NSW from Tuesday February 26.

There will also other Adelaide Fringe events outside of the city centre with Stepney’s Dunstone Grove boasting pop-up venue Howl The Moon which will be featuring live performances from a variety of local acts. The pop-up venue will also have food stalls and a bar.

Adelaide Fringe also sees the return of the ever-popular Garden Of Unearthly Delights in Rundle Park which now boasts almost a dozen separate venues ranging from the intimate Cupola through to The Big Top. Performances range from comedians such as Wil Anderson, Judith Lucy, Pete Helliar and Heath Franklin through to Limbo, a brand new cabaret-style show featuring a live band and highly skilled performers from New York, Brussels and Berlin.

Located in Rymill Pk, Gluttony returns with yet another program of some 80 acts as part of Adelaide Fringe that will incorporate everything from comedy through to theatre and children’s entertainment.

A new Adelaide Fringe venture is The Depot, situated between Grote St and Franklin Sts, which will have Adelaide Fringe’s first closing night concert on Saturday March 16. It will feature singer-songwriter Pete Murray and Sydney group The Whitlams performing in an outdoor setting with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

That’s just some of Adelaide Fringe’s many highlights for 2013. Check out the rest at www.adelaidefringe.com.auand book via FringeTix.

Adelaide Fringe Reviews