Converting Adelaide to an eventful city: the 2017 Adelaide Cabaret Festival programme is a feast for the senses and for all ages

The tables are turning in 2017 and Adelaide Festival Centre's Adelaide Cabaret Festivalinvites you to join the revolution and discover the sumptuous offerings in its 2017 program. Discover new venues and old friends and expect to feel upturned, challenged and delighted by incredible performers that could change your world view.

Artistic directors Ali McGregor and Eddie Perfect together with Adelaide Festival Centre proudly serve up a program of 430 artists in 147 performances over 16 days and nights. There are 58 international artists from as far afield as the United States, Ireland, United Kingdom, Japan and New Zealand, together with 372 Australian artists including 234 from South Australia. The 2017 festival showcases 17 world premieres, 5 Australian premieres, 25 Adelaide premieres as well as 17 Adelaide exclusives, 20 shows with international artists and 5 totally original shows commissioned or co-commissioned by Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

Minister for the Arts the Hon. Jack Snelling MP:
"Adelaide Cabaret Festival was recognised as South Australia's best major event and festival in the 2016 South Australian Tourism Awards. This is a great achievement in the festival state and a testament to the power of the arts and cabaret to bring people together and light up the city as it does each June."

Adelaide Festival Centre CEO and Artistic Director Douglas Gautier:
"We welcome back Ali McGregor and Eddie Perfect as they continue to build on last year's phenomenal event - one of our most successful Adelaide Cabaret Festivals ever. This year, the cabaret spirit is stronger than ever and invites you to engage with our venues like never before. We've repositioned Wintergarden, introduced a new venue (Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent) and a number of program highlights will grace Her Majesty's Theatre stage. Now in its 17th year the success of the festival would not be possible without the dedicated staff and volunteers, ongoing support of our loyal Adelaide Cabaret Festival patrons, the South Australian Government, associated partners and corporate sponsors."

Artistic Director Ali McGregor:
"Our final night gala this year has the theme Love and Revolution which is a sentiment that runs throughout this year's program. I don't think any other genre has the ability to emotionally connect like cabaret. This year we have people creating quiet revolutions in dance and theatre, loud revolutions with burlesque and tomfoolery and dissonant revolutions with unique musical collaborations. The common theme throughout is one of LOVE: love through the discovery of another's story, a shared enjoyment of song, the ability to laugh at ourselves and question our motives and desires.

"The intimacy of cabaret means that there is an inherent level of trust between performer and audience. But there is also a level of trust that YOU, our loyal patrons put in Eddie and I. We are introducing you to some new acts and ideas. The tables that turn will not only bring fresh talent but also celebrate performers that you already know and love."

Artistic Director Eddie Perfect:
"Nobody can deny that the social and political landscape has become wild and bumpy in 2017. Wherever you sit on the ideological spectrum, we all find ourselves living in George Orwell's 1984 where war is peace, ignorance is strength and lies are truth.

"It is my biased opinion that cabaret has a rich and strong tradition as one of the first art forms to react to the world around us. The 2017 program represents unique and varied artists doing just that: speaking to power, questioning tradition, upholding tolerance, love and respect, and uniting us together as an audience, a city or just one single room, to laugh at naked emperors and to feel embraced, accepted and alive. In 2017 we invite our brave and open-minded audience to join us to turn the tables from fear to love, division to unity, anger to joy, and all with wit, skill, wonder and passion."

Take a first bedazzled bite of the pie with hosts Ali McGregor and Eddie Perfect during the opening weekend. Tried and tested favourite the Variety Performance Gala will feature a sizzling smorgasbord of unmissable acts over two nights, presentation of the annual Cabaret Icon Award, and a few secret ingredients. 2016's hugely successful Family Gala returns giving pint-sized theatregoers their first taste of walking the red carpet. Frock up the entire family and celebrate extra hard with 2017 also heralding the 40th birthday of Something on Saturday.

Family circle celebrations continue with the 16th instalment of Hush 16: A Piece of Quiet original Australian music created for children in hospitals blending lyrical input from Australian children, stunning vocals from The Idea of North and inspirational musical compositions by Elena Kats-Chernin, Lior and Adelaide's Zephyr Quartet. Lior also lends his exemplary voice and songwriting prowess to Love, Loss and Compassion in which the he presents with Australian String Quartet beloved songs, selected previews from his upcoming album and a re-imagined version of Sim Shalom (Grant Peace) from the orchestral song cycle, Compassion, written with Nigel Westlake.

Turns of phrase, songwriters and wordsmiths are the bread and butter of cabaret. Whisking together incredible culinary fusions are iconic singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and magnetic Irish-French chanteuse Camille O'Sullivan who breathe new life into the works of W. B. Yeats and the poets of Erin and add newly composed songs to create Ancient Rain. In Peter Coleman-Wright & Nexas Quartet, baritone Peter Coleman-Wright and scintillating saxophonists Nexas Quartet embark on a musical journey from Berlin and Vienna to New York and beyond with a mixture of Weimar political songs and those of Weill, Stolz and Schreker.

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