Melbourne Festival 2017: The Fifteen Must-See Shows

This year's Melbourne Festival line-up has just dropped and it's one seriously good looking spread of theatre, dance, music and performance. Arts and Culture Editor Maxim Boon has poured over 2017's offering to select 15 shows you won't want to miss.

Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History Of Popular Music



This year's headline events are going to be the talk of our fair city for years to come. Created by one of the most revered performance artists in the world, this epic ode to the history of modern music is one of the most ambitious productions ever staged by the Festival. At the centre of this mercurial celebration of 240-years of pop culture, is the indomitable Taylor Mac, a performer who defies categorisation. Spread over four performances, each lasting six hours, this decade-by-decade journey through the soundtrack of America from 1776 to 2016 is a once in a generation quality show. But more than this, it's also a chronicle of the defining events of the past two centuries, from the abolition of slavery, prohibition, the suffrage movement, civil rights, and most recently, marriage equality. Mac will also be bookending this year's program with The Inauguration on 5 Oct and The Wrap on 22 Oct, featuring highlights from this magnum opus.
When & Where: 11, 13, 18 & 20 Oct, Forum Theatre

The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir



Upon reaching his half century a couple years back, Stephin Merritt, the frontman of American indie pop icons The Magnetic Fields, indulged in a bit of self-reflection. The result was a 50-song anthology chronicling his life, celebrating and lamenting the highs and lows of his five decades. Spread across two performances, each offering 25-years-worth of songs, Merritt will perform this audacious collection within a meticulously created reconstruction of his childhood bedroom.
When & Where: 21 & 22 Oct, Hamer Hall

Tree Of Codes



Collaborations don't get more world-class than this. Choreographer and Royal Ballet Resident Artist Wayne McGregor, visual artist and light installationist Olafur Eliasson, and musician Jamie XX — three celebrated artists at the top of their game — have come together to produce an astonishingly vibrant evening of dance, music and visual spectacle. This remarkable response to writer Jonathan Safran Foer's groundbreaking book-sculpture of the same name will be performed by dancers from McGregor's company supplemented by several soloists from the world's most prestigious dance troupe, the Paris Opera Ballet.
When & Where: 17 - 21 Oct, State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

7 Pleasures



Danish dance-maker Mette Ingvartsen gets to the naked truth of our human capacity for desire and the need for satisfaction, in this daring production. 12 dancers, who will perform utterly naked, will come together to create a writhing assemblage of bodies, in a show that toes the line between art and provocation. Exploring ideas of body politics and how the naked form still has the power to shock, this is a beautifully dangerous celebration of our species' most animalistic and elemental traits.
When & Where: 18 - 22 Oct, Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne

Please Continue, (Hamlet)



Theatre and reality collide in this groundbreaking event, as real life Australian legal professionals apply the letter of the law to one of Shakespeare's most complex characters. Barristers, a sitting judge, and forensic experts will pour over the evidence and plead the case of the Bard's Danish prince. A real jury of Melburnians will then decide the youth's fate, based on the compelling evidence and testimony. This entirely unscripted event is different at every performance, with an outcome that cannot be predicted. While it's been staged elsewhere in the world, this is the first time this exhilaratingly original concept will be using the Australian legal system as its foundation.
When & Where: 5 - 9 Oct, Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne

Tanderrum



Now in its fifth year, this meeting of Aboriginal elders from the five clans of the Eastern Kulin nation, has become a festival tradition as well as an important nod to the cultural heritage of Australia's first nations. Based on a tradition dating back millennia, this sharing of culture between elders from the Wurundjeri, Boon Wurrung, Tuan Wurrung, Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung clans invites visitors to the festival and the people of Melbourne to be engaged and inspired by the rich history of our country.
When & Where: 4 Oct, Federation Square

Under Siege



Created by acclaimed choreographer and dancer Yang Liping — a living legend in her native China — this spectacular production offers a wild fusion of styles, from ballet to hip hop, as it poetically explores the story of the climactic battle between the Chu and Han armies, a pivotal moment in China's history. Designed by Tim Yip, the Oscar-winning talent behind New Orientalist masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this stunningly vibrant evening of dance theatre tells a tale that proves the old adage, all is fair in love and war.
When & Where: 5 - 8 Oct, State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

Caravan



A collection of the boldest theatre makers in the country have come together to create this site-specific new work, taking a darkly comic look at love, life and living conditions in Australia's underclass. Firebrand playwrights Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Angus Cerini and Wayne Macauley have teamed up with theatre radicals Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks to tell the story of Judy and Donna, a mother and daughter living together in a dilapidated caravan, in a show that reveals the faded dreams and stark realities of those living on the lowest rung of society's ladder.
When & Where: 5 - 22 Oct, Forecourt, Malthouse Theatre

All The Sex I Ever Had



Last year, Canada’s Mammalian Diving Reflex unleashed the youngest tonsorialists our city had ever seen, in the 2016 Festival hit Haircuts By Children. This year, they’re looking to the opposite end of the human experience, as real over-65s from Melbourne reveal the unheard stories from a lifetime between the sheets. From popped-cherries to swan song shags, this taboo-defying show rails against the notion that seniors shouldn’t be sexual.
When & Where: 12 – 15 Oct, Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne

We Love Arabs



The cultural and historical tensions that exist between the people of Israel and Palestine are often generalised into a pervasive presumption of hate. This hilarious and bitingly satirical dance-theatre show offers another perspective, while simultaneously needling the notion that people of Jewish and Arab descent cannot form meaningful relationships. The choreographic clowning of Hillel Kogan and Adi Boutrous with make you laugh as much as it makes you think.
When & Where: 18 – 22 Oct, Malthouse Theatre

Two Jews Walk Into A Theatre



Two of Australia’s most accomplished performers, actor Brian Lipson and Helpmann Award-winning dance-maker Gideon Obrazanek, inhabit their fathers on stage in this intimate, uplifting, and irreverent show questioning how much we truly inherit from our parents. Directed in collaboration with celebrated choreographer Lucy Guerin, this theatrically simple yet emotionally complex two-hander braves thorny topics like age, political belief and what makes us who we are, with an artfully light touch.
When & Where: 18 – 22 Oct, Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne

Survival Skills For Desperate Times



To paraphrase Festival Director Jonathan Holloway in his recent interview with The Music, these are some fucked up times we’re living through y'all! But you’re going to need more than tinned food and a nuclear bunker if you’re going to make it through the wilderness. Through this series of performance lectures, from the likes of Barry Award-winning comic Zoe Coombs Marr, dancer and drag artists Daniel Newell, and Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong artist Vicki Couzens, you’ll learn how to laugh, be creative and remain fabulous when the four horsemen come a-knocking.
When & Where: 7 & 8 Oct, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall

In Between Two



Aussie hip-hop stars, Joelistics from TZU and James Mangohig from Sietta, use their musical skills to share their personal experiences growing up mixed-race in Australia. In a show spanning two generations, flavours of traditional Asian music mix with their hip-hop stylings to reveal the vibrant personality and irrepressible resilience of culturally diverse communities in a country where casual racism is far too common.
Where & When: 11 – 15 Oct, Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne

Bangsokol: A Requiem For Cambodia



Some 40-years since the fall of Phnom Pehn to the Khmer Rouge, this blisteringly wrought symphonic tribute commemorates the atrocities that devastated Cambodia in the late ‘70s. This extraordinary new work is the first collaboration between Oscar-nominated director Rithy Pahn and composer Him Sophy, both survivors of the Khmer Rouge massacres, both trailblazers for Cambodia’s burgeoning cultural renaissance. Featuring local musicians alongside the Taipei Philharmonic Choir, this is a work of enormous cultural significance and astonishing beauty.
When & Where: 13 & 14 Oct, Hamer Hall