Adelaide Festival

Adelaide Festival runs 1-17 March with a full programme of theatre, music, dance and visual arts and a writer's week. The programme features Australian premieres of theatre and dance productions from The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, the UK and Belgium.

Australian premiere productions include:

The National Theatre of Great Britain presents One Man, Two Guvnors (28 Feb - 9 March)

Slapstick, satire, songs and glittering one-liners combine in this glorious celebration of British comedy.

Hotel Modern from The Netherlands presents Kamp (12-17 March)

“A performance so gripping that when it ends the audience is unsure whether to clap or leave the theatre silently.” [Noordhollands Dagblad]

An attempt to imagine the unimaginable: thousands of eight centimetre tall puppets spring to life amid a scale model based on Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is war correspondence Hotel Modern style, depicting the greatest mass murder in history. Actors weave through scenes in overcrowded barracks, railway tracks and the Arbeit Macht Frei gateway, filming the horrific events with miniature cameras in an almost impossibly powerful theatrical experience.

On March 14-17, Adelaide Festival presents Nosferatu, from Poland, the production by TR Warszawa and Teatr Narodowy, inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula with adaptation and direction by Grzegorz Jarzyna

From Murnau to Coppola, Bram Stoker’s blood-sucking hero has become an icon of pop culture. As is his calling – his purpose – acclaimed director Grzegorz Jarzyna’s Nosferatu forces us to confront our deepest anxieties, visiting us only because we have called upon him; thirsting for our souls as we thirst for them to be taken. If there’s one psychological and metaphysical vampirical thriller to see this festival, this is it.

From Spain, Carlos Saura's Flamenco Hoy

Flamenco lovers rejoice as Carlos Saura reveals his ambitious new project, an unforgettable musical with young performers embarking on a daring expedition through past, present and future flamenco. The director of classic films including Blood Wedding and La Caza, Saura creates a fervid mingling of modern and traditional, pasodoble and martinete, Caracol and Gades, fiesta and tragedy, folklore and jazz, east and west.

On the dance programme: Belgium's Ultima Vez with What the Body Does Not Remember

For the first time in Australia Wim Vandekeybus, one of the most influential choreographers in contemporary dance, shares an unsettling confrontation of dance and music: What the Body Does Not Remember. A remount of a work that changed contemporary dance forever, this piece is a feat of daring. It explores the intensity of moments when you don’t have a choice, when other things decide for you - falling in love; the second before the accident that has to happen. As well as Adelaide exclusives: The Smile off your Face and Internal by Ontroerend Goed (Belgium) And check out the programme for Adelaide Writers' Week (2-7 March) which explores secret histories – of the ancient world, the British Royal Family, the war in Iraq, the Balkans, marriage, old age, poverty, childhood, Soviet Russia, food politics, video games, love, sex, both World Wars, folktales, art world scandals, court rooms, locker rooms, school rooms, Australia’s convict past, horse breeding, wine making, country houses, movies, murder, money, Chinese food and afternoons on the beach. Image: Nosferatu - credit: Stefan Okolowicz