Reviews

Gente, gente! (Italian for ‘People, people!’) is a grassroots not-for-profit opera company producing shows “for the people, by people who love opera”. Many of those opera lovers braved a rainy Saturday night in winter to see the opening night of their production of Dialogues des Carmélites.

The tragedy of living in a world of make-believe finds timeless expression in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, in the character of Blanche DuBois, a woman close to forty hoping that her pretensions of class, glamour, and (greater) youth will bring her the prince of her dreams.

To celebrate the end of another Adelaide Cabaret Festival, it seemed fitting that the 2024 cabaret icon award recipient Reuben Kaye would host a cross-section of talented performers to bring us 90 minutes of raucous entertainment. Joining him to celebrate the hilarity was Adelaide Cabaret artistic director, Virginia Gay.

Kaye sashayed through the crowd as we entered, greeting audience members like life-long friends. His trademark lavish lashes, mischievous smile and immense talent are what makes this performer a sensation at many cabaret and comedy festivals across the world.

In an old and abandoned picture theatre there resides a dark and mysterious zone for anyone who dares to enter. When Night Comes is a spectacular immersive theatrical experience created by the Broad Encounters team behind Moho Magic Bar and Love Lust Lost.

There is a waiting time in the foyer, a bar at hand, people milling around and hooded cloaks to wear. The atmosphere is delicious. We the audience are expecting the unexpected, gathered in groups of ten or so at the hidden entrance that will begin our shapeshifting hedonistic journey.