Sunday Mail (SA)

SUN 26 FEB 2006

In a world-class of its own ...

... what's hot at the Adelaide Festival

By MATT BYRNE

ARTS writer MATT BYRNE runs the rule over the standout events at this year's Adelaide Festival

THE 2006 Adelaide Festival is the most anticipated, biggest-budget, biggest-picture festival since Barrie Kosky's 1996 event.

The cash registers are ringing as box-office targets tumble, expectations rise and nerve-ends fray as Friday approaches.

Artistic director Brett Sheehy has assembled a world-class program designed to restore the Festival to its rightful place as Australia's iconic arts event. As we rush off to the Fringe, pause and put aside precious dollars for maybe one Festival event.

If you think the Adelaide Festival is elite entertainment for the glitterati, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover there is a range of shows for all tastes. Try these for size:

Songs From the Yellow Bedroom, Adelaide Town Hall, Saturday and Sunday.

WITH David Wenham on board providing the star turn, this musical tribute to Mahler and Van Gogh is going to be the real late bloomer in the Festival program and box office.

The show, which is billed as part opera song cycle, part drama, is the final realisation of the late Australian director Richard Wherrett's longtime ambition to blend Gustav Mahler's The Song Of The Earth with the letters of Vincent Van Gogh.

Contemporaries Mahler and Van Gogh both found inspiration in nature. STC boss Adam Cook will direct the work as Wenham reads letters from Van Gogh's prolific 1880s period, and Diego Masson conducts the Australian Youth Orchestra, with vocals from mezzo soprano Bernadette Cullen and tenor Keith Lewis.

Breakin' Ground - Graffiti Showcase with KAB101, Kano and DJ STAEN 1, Terra Firma, Wanted Posse with MC Fin (Fin Kruckemeyer), Thebarton Theatre, Saturday to March 8.

ANYONE who thinks the festival is only for elite audiences will get a mighty shock when this major hip-hop event is unleashed.

It will be Australia's first taste of the Breakin' Convention line-up, which set Sadler Wells shaking last year.

Catch international hip-hop heroes France's Wanted Posse with showpiece Bad Moves, which explores the body beat in a parallel universe.

The evening will kick off with graffiti artists KAB101 and Kano, who will use their canned talent, backed by Australian DMC champion DJ STAEN 1. Then Australian hip-hop group Terra Firma will take up the challenge, with Simplex, Mic Lez and DJ Dyms in pulsating form before the Posse arrives to take the stage.

Here Lies Love, David Byrne and Adelaide Festival Commission, Ridley Centre, Wayville Showgrounds, March 9-14.

WITH another coup apparently in the wind in the Philippines, this is a timely song cycle (that's the latest buzz word for musical theatre that can't be categorised) about the excesses of the Marcos regime.

With David Byrne - lead singer of seminal US band Talking Heads - now performing his original concept, lyrics and music live, along with Fat Boy Slim (aka Norman Cook), it is probably the edgiest commission in the entire festival.

This multi-media extravaganza will dramatise the excesses of the Marcos regime that bled a nation dry while Imelda hosted a non-stop party and changed shoes faster than TV watchers change channels.

The Marcos family was the biggest international sight act since the Perons, and the Ridley Centre will be transformed into a massive dance club. Cherie Blair, Saddam Hussein and Rudi Giuliani would have been there right now if people power hadn't ended the charade.

Don't cry for them, Philippines!

Three Furies, Griffin Theatre Company, Dunstan Playhouse, Saturday and Sunday.

AFTER its success at the 2005 Sydney Festival, Stephen Sewell's award-winning biographical look at the life of controversial 20th-century artist Francis Bacon is being revived.

The daring cabaret drama features Simon Burke as the enigmatic Bacon and Socratis Otto as his muse, The Model, with Paul Capsis also on board as Tisiphone.

The wonderful Jim Sharman directs this Weimar-inspired tragicomedy as the very twisted portrait of an uncompromising artist is unveiled, with original music from Basil Hogios.

Watch art reflect life through the three-way mirror that was Bacon's career.

Devolution, Australian Dance Theatre, Her Majesty's Theatre, Wednesday to March 8.

HUMAN meets machine in this typically ground-breaking work from ADT boss Garry Stewart.

Stewart pits his dancers against the mechanised wizardry of Canadian multi-disciplinary artist Louis-Philippe Demers and UK video artist Gina Czarnecki. See Australian Dance Theatre dancers encounter the machine age, working with athletic robots, spines and metallic creatures, using prosthetic limbs.

Where does the blood stop and the oil begin? After the photogenic brilliance of Held, Devolution will test the boundaries of a brave new world where humans and machines must plug into the same system for both to survive.

Costume design is by Georg Meyer-Wiel and the stunning music is from composer Darrin Verhagen.

Don't miss this world-class Adelaide dance company click you into the Festival mainframe.

Il Cielo che Danza, Compagnia di Valerio Festi (Studio Festi), Elder Park, Friday to Sunday.

WHO says you need money to go to the festival?

One of the greatest attractions will be up in the air for the opening three nights when Italy's Compagnia di Valerio Festi (Studio Festi) presents a specially commissioned work under the name of Il Cielo che Danza, or The Dancing Sky.

For three nights, crowds will flock along to see the Italian company which got the Torino Winter Olympics off to such a flying start.

Dancers will materialise out of the night sky around Elder Park, and also emerge from the River Torrens.

Massive baroque-style painted helium balloons will propel them in a airborne performance which will have people coming back for three nights to catch the action again and again.

Something free and artistic that takes us to the sky, but lasts longer than a firework - it's a must way to start Sheehy's flight of festival fancy.

The Adelaide Festival is from Friday to March 19. Bookings: BASS on 131 246 or go to www.adelaidefestival.com.au