The Picture of Dorian Gray: 13 – 20 March, Her Majesty’s Theatre
Shakespeare was fond of regularly utilising small casts of male actors playing multiple male and female roles in one production. Yet, even the Bard himself may have balked at the thought of one actor playing 26 different characters…and applauded wildly at the curtain call for anyone who dared!
When Eryn Jean Norvill, one of the best and most talked about actors of her generation, first took to the stage to do just that in Sydney Theatre Company’s 2020 production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, audiences did not only applaud; they leapt to their feet in triumph, with five-star critical reviews across the board and a sell-out season. It quickly became a ‘must-have’ performance for the 2022 Adelaide Festival.
In the hands of Director Kip Williams, Oscar Wilde’s century-old fable of beauty, excess, and a deal with the devil becomes a spectacular mirror to our image-obsessed society with eternal youth and appearance. This production sees Norvill in an Olympic act of performance: nimbly shapeshifting to play all of the dark tale’s characters in an audacious cascade of theatrical transformations that leaps across the century to speak straight to us today.
The Nightline: 4-20 March, Cnr of Playhouse Lane and Gilles Arcade
The Nightline invites you to pick up a phone and guiltlessly eavesdrop on real-life stories, rants, confessions, inanities, pranks and private thoughts compiled from over 600 anonymous callers left between the hours of midnight and 6am. You are ushered into an intimate space and shown to a dimly lit table for one. In place of a dinner setting is a 70’s rotary-dial telephone and a simple switchboard. Gingerly, you lift the receiver and are directly connected to an exclusive club of lone truckies, shift-workers, new parents, security workers, and troubled or restless souls, all submitted to theatre-maker Roslyn Oades via a call-out on late-night radio and mysterious posters plastered on city walls.
Hop on the party line and become a captivated listener for 40 poignant, profoundly moving and unforgettable minutes.
ICEHOUSE 40th Anniversary Concert – 8 March, Village Green
2022 marks 40 years since the inaugural release of ICEHOUSE’s legendary anthem Great Southern Land, written by frontman Iva Davies in homage to Australia and its landscape while homesick on the band's first overseas tour. You won’t want to miss this incredible performance under the stars at Adelaide Oval’s Village Green, with guest appearances by Iva Davies’ friend and yidaki (didgeridoo) master William Barton, and Groote Eylandt’s AIR award-winning and ARIA-nominated blues and roots artist Emily Wurramara.
In addition to the iconic Great Southern Land, memories are reawakened by songs like Hey Little Girl, No Promises, My Obsession, Crazy, Electric Blue, We Can Get Together and Man of Colours. Whether you are a long-term fan of their music or are encountering them for the first time, you’ll be struck by the beauty of their melodies and progressions. Presented in association with Live Nation.
The Photo Box: 3-7 March, Space Theatre
Gifted local storyteller Emma Beech stars in this funny and heartfelt world premiere, presented together with Adelaide’s Brink Productions and Vitalstastistix, about family, memory and myth-making.
Emma’s parents recently gave her a box of family snaps to rummage through; amongst all the embarrassing hilarity of hairdos and frocks was a shot of her mum, aged 40, holding her baby self, the little surprise born eight years after the last of her eight(!) siblings. Emma, at the time, was 40 herself and mother of 5-year-old triplets. Out of that instant electric connection between two very different women The Photo Box was born.
It’s about the regional South Australian town of Barmera where everyone knows you, and a girl left to make her own mistakes and grow herself up.