Adelaide Cabaret Festival unveils 2021 program

South Australia’s popular winter event, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, returns in June and is shining the spotlight on Australia’s best, brightest, and boldest performers, with the full line-up announced on sale today.

The festival returns to Adelaide Festival Centre following last year’s online offering, and stars more than 180 artists in 105 performances over 12 days and nights. Showcasing classic and contemporary cabaret with a touch of nostalgia, the 21st program features 10 world premieres, four Australian premieres and 10 Adelaide exclusives by a large contingent of Australian artists and performers from the USA, and Canada.

Tony Award winning Hollywood actor and cabaret king, Alan Cumming - the festival’s first international Artistic Director in its 21-year history - presents the 2021 program as his personal ‘love letter’ to Australia.

Cumming is excited to finally share this festival line-up and comments “as ever I have gone with my gut - a quality I think we Scots and Australians share. This festival is a temple to my love and nostalgia for Australia - the people, the spirit, the adventure, the fusion of high and low that I have learned and stolen from and hold dear in my heart. I hope you Australians enjoy this Scot’s cabaret love letter to you.”

Due to popular demand, Cumming will perform a second show of his world premiere, Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Festival Theatre on 26th June, with tickets on sale today.

Festival favourite Eddie Perfect returns with the Adelaide Premiere of his latest show Eddie Perfect – Introspective. A former Adelaide Cabaret Festival Artistic Director, Perfect shares an intimate, honest, and reflective account of his recent work, including two years in New York writing Broadway musicals Beetlejuice and King Kong.

In a special concert, Australia’s next generation of First Nations artists will perform in Deadly Hearts - celebrating Australian Indigenous music. The incredible line-up includes multi award winning musician and artist, Dan Sultan; 2019 National Indigenous Music Awards nominee, Tia Gostelow; 2020 Music Vic award winner for Best Emerging Artist, Kee’ahn; and 2019 Triple J Unearthed High Indigenous Initiative winner, Aodhan.

Headliner show, Songs of Don, will rock Festival Theatre in the middle weekend of the festival. The performance will celebrate the work of legendary Australian songwriter Don Walker - best known as the main songwriter for Cold Chisel. Powerhouse vocalists Katie Noonan, Clare Bowditch, Emma Donovan and Sarah Mcleod will belt out reimagined versions of iconic songs including ‘Khe Sanh,’ ‘Saturday Night’, ‘Cheap Wine’ and ‘Standing on the Outside’.

Continuing the celebration of strong Australian female voices, Tania Doko, Emma Pask and Prinnie Stevens will pay tribute to some of history’s greatest female artists in Hear Me Roar – Unplugged, an Adelaide exclusive on the last weekend.

After a sell-out show in 2019, RocKwiz returns to the Festival Theatre, this time saluting Eurovision, with host and former festival Artistic Director Julia Zemiro alongside Brian Nankervis and special guests including Alan Cumming himself.

In a nod to nostalgia, Young Talent Time 50th Anniversary Reunion Special will make its world premiere at Adelaide Cabaret Festival in the Festival Theatre on Saturday, 19th June with Johnny Young himself hosting the show. 2021 marks the 50th Anniversary of the first ever performances of the hit Australain TV show that made household names out of dozens of young artists. Alumni including Beven Addinsall, Karen Knowles, Jane Scali, Philip Gould, Steven Zammit, Joey Dee and Greg Poynton will grace the stage and relive the magic of YTT for one night only.

South Australian performers with their own shows include 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival Icon Award winner Robyn Archer in Mother Archer’s Cabaret for Dark Times, which dares to stare down misery and catastrophe in a stirring, funny and moving performance. And Adelaide’s own Max Savage reflects on the country’s most famous literary hoax in ERN: Australia’s Greatest Hoax - this year’s Frank Ford Commissioning Award. The award by Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s late founding father, the Frank Ford Commissioning Award provides $20,000 a year towards the creation of new works by South Australian artists and will continue to help mentor and nurture emerging cabaret talent.

Following sold out shows at Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2019, New York’s Amber Martin returns in Bathhouse Bette – an uplifting celebration of the earliest bathhouse performances by iconic singer, actor, and comedian Bette Midler. Meanwhile AFI Award winner Bojana Novakovic performs throughout the festival with an ever-changing cast of surprise guests in the improvisational experiment The Blind Date Project and Helpmann Award nominee Kim David Smith conjures the doom and decadence of 1920s Berlin with his intimate show about Marlene Dietrich in Mostly Marlene.

Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2021 runs from 11th June until 26th June.

View full Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2021 program and purchase tickets here