Rufus Wainwright, Barrie Kosky And Crystal Pite Headline 2017 Adelaide Festival

The Adelaide Festival’s duo of new directors, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, have unveiled their debut selection for 2017 and it isn’t pulling any punches. Australian firebrand director Barrie Kosky, musical powerhouse Rufus Wainwright and Canadian dance visionary Crystal Pite will headline next year's program.

Ambitious, large scale productions, big-hitting stars and the most ambitious Festival hub in the event’s history reflect the artistic clout and administrative savvy Armfield and Healy have brought to the Adelaide Fest’s proverbial table. In total, 31 theatre, music, opera, dance, film and visual arts events will be on offer, in addition to the Adelaide Writers’ Week and WOMADelaide programs. Of those 31 shows, more than half are Australian premieres (16 in total) and Adelaide exclusives (17 productions). However, the program features a noticeably meagre number of new commissions, with just three world premieres presented during the 17 day Festival season, 3 — 19 March.

Barry Kosky's Saul

The headline event – Barrie Kosky’s visually spectacular staging of Handel’s biblical masterpiece Saul – was unveiled back in August, and given the scale of the production and the colossal price tag of importing it from the UK, the impact of such an expensive show on the rest of the Festival program was potentially severe. However, Healy and Armfield have managed to maintain a consistently epic vision across the whole Festival offering without any noticeable dips in scope or quality.

American-Candian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright headlines the music program with a one-night-only double bill of self-penned spectaculars: Prima Donna and highlights from Rufus Does Judy, his recreation of Judy Garland’s famed 1961 Carnegie Hall performance.

Dance lovers should flock to Adelaide to see one of the most significant new choreographies of recent years: Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young’s Betroffenheit. Performed by Pite's Kidd Pivot dance company, this boundary smashing production, which has earned incandescent reviews since premiering in Toronto in 2015, is a brutally poignant and devastatingly beautiful reflection on loss, trauma and recovery inspired by the death of Young’s teenage daughter.

Crystal Pite's Bettroffenheit

Berlin’s Schaubühne Theater will present its gritty, dystopian interpretation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Starring Lars Eidinger in the title role, the production was one of the big hits from this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, praised for its “strange, compelling and utterly charismatic” account of the Bard’s most complex history play.

Among the Australian-made productions will be Sydney Theatre Company’s multi-Helpmann Award-winning staging of The Secret River, directed by Armfield. Aussie film and theatre stalwart Miriam Margolyes will join the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Prokofiev’s childhood favourite Peter and the Wolf. South Australian dance company Restless Dance Theatre will present the world premiere of a newly devised immersive show, Intimate Spaces, in the Hilton Hotel and, in keeping with the currently trending enthusiasm for circus, SA-based acrobatic troupe Backbone will present its internationally acclaimed spectacular, Gravity and Other Myths.

Full details of the 2017 Adelaide Festival are available now.