Premiere shows set for 2025 Adelaide Festival

THE program for the 2025 Adelaide Festival has been announced by artistic director Brett Sheehy and includes 65 events, 11 world premieres, nine Australian premieres and 15 festival exclusives.

The annual festival, which next year runs from February 28 to March 16, kicks off with the epic opera Innocence directed by acclaimed Australian director Simon Stone.

Following its success at the Royal Opera Covent Garden, this contemporary tale of morality and mortality by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho features Australian star Teddy Tahu Rhodes and international opera singers Sean Panikkar, Jenny Carlstedt, Tuomas Pursio and Claire de Sevigne.

Other headline acts include the dance Club Amour performed by German dance company Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal and the Australian Dance Theatre’s 60th anniversary production A Quiet Language.

The world premiere of Stephanie Lake Company’s Mass Movement will be held at dusk on March 1 at Elder Park with more than 1000 dancers aged 12-88 performing a mix of dance styles in a free performance.

Acclaimed Irish actor Stephen Rea stars in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, a play set around a journey of self-discovery.

Best-selling author Trent Dalton spent two months in 2021 on a Brisbane street corner soliciting love stories from passers-by for the adaptation of his Love Stories being staged at the Adelaide Festival Centre.

Actor Seann Miley Moore stars in the new Australian production of the cult rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which premieres at the festival.

Sheehy, who was artistic director of the Adelaide Festival from 2005-08 and stepped into the role following the resignation of Ruth Mackenzie in August this year, said: “I’m thrilled to be back at the helm of our nation’s major cultural drawcard.”

He added: “I’ve relished the opportunity to complete the program of extraordinary opera, dance, theatre and music works you won’t experience anywhere else in the country.”

The 2024 Adelaide Festival/Adelaide Writers’ Week broke attendance records with about 500,000 people attending ticketed and free events, including many visitors from interstate who accounted for 30 per cent of ticket sales.

Adelaide Writers’ Week, under director Louise Adler, returns from March 1-6 with a large lineup of authors including Geraldine Brooks, Helen Garner, Mark Dapin and Jessie Tu. Marcus Zusak will celebrate 20 years since the publication of The Book Thief.

WOMADelaide will be held in Botanic Park from March 8-11 with artists appearing from more than 25 countries. The full Adelaide Festival program will be announced in January.

Hotel Indigo Adelaide Markets is one of the festival’s official preferred hotels, situated close to theatres and the popular Adelaide Central Market.

The hotel’s general manager, Thomas Zinn, said, “Immerse yourself in the energy of Adelaide, where creativity and culture come alive, and make our hotel your home base for a truly unforgettable festival experience.”

Hotel Indigo Adelaide Markets opened in 2021 and has 145 rooms featuring local artworks, restaurant, rooftop bar, fitness centre and heated outdoor pool.

For more information: adelaidefestival.com.au

Boutique Sydney hotel with style

IT’S not often that you check into a hotel from the bar, but that’s the case at the boutique Hotel Morris in Pitt Street in the heart of Sydney’s Chinatown.

Just enter through Bar Morris and head to the end of the long marble bar where hotel staff will welcome you. Then keep walking through the art deco style bar to the lifts leading to the 82 rooms spread over 13 floors in the Italian Renaissance-style heritage building.

Hotel Morris, which opened in June 2023 at 412 Pitt Street, Haymarket is the third Australian property in Accor’s Handwritten Collection of 17 hotels worldwide along with Perth’s Wonil Hotel and Sydney’s Hotel Woolstore 1888.

These boutique hotels are selected for their “personality” where guests experience traditional hospitality with a twist and there’s no shortage of that at Hotel Morris, whose GM is Atsuko Asano, joint winner of 2023 HM Awards in the Australian general manager category.

The building that houses the renovated Hotel Morris was designed by Sydney-born architect Virgil Dante Cizzio that opened in 1929 with Renaissance-inspired features and art deco influences that remain today.

Bar Morris is a wine bar and restaurant with banquettes, bar stools and marble tables adorned with crystal chandeliers that can seat 40 people. It is open for meals, snacks and drinks and the menu has a distinctive Italian flavour.

The hotel’s corridors have low ceilings that lead to the guest rooms which are divided into six categories, from bambina (13 square metres with a queen size bed) to grande (28 square metres with a king size bed and adjoining lounge area with a large couch and coffee table).

There’s plenty of thoughtful touches in the rooms such as environmentally-friendly bathroom amenities, numerous power points, a motion-sensitive night light in the bathroom and a pillow menu from housekeeping – if the range of soft and hard pillows already on the bed don’t meet your needs.

There’s custom furniture, warm timbers and original artworks by local artists. Some of the rooms have large windows with black spokes reminiscent of the 1930s original style, perfect to gaze at the bustle of Pitt Street.

The hotel is situated close to Central Station, the Capital Theatre, restaurants of Chinatown and city parks.

For more information: hotelmorris.com.au

Expedition huts in Ross Sea Antarctica.

In the footsteps of Antarctica’s early explorers

EXPLORE Antarctica’s remote Ross Sea region and learn about its fascinating history on Heritage Expeditions upcoming 28-day journey, In the Wake of Scott & Shackleton: Ross Sea Antarctica.

With shipping restricted by an impenetrable pack ice to just two months – January and February – every summer, few people have the opportunity of exploring this part of Antarctica.

The adventure starts in Queenstown, New Zealand where passengers spend a night before heading to the port of Bluff to embark the ice-strengthened Heritage Adventurer, journeying south to islands including Macquarie Island which is home to the beautiful Royal Penguin.

It takes more than a week to reach the Ross Sea region, which is named after Sir James Clark Ross who discovered it in 1841 and famous for the races to the pole led by Robert Falcon Scott (1901-04), Ernest Shackleton (1907-09 and 1914-17) and Roald Amundsen (1911).

Passengers can step inside the iconic Shackleton and Scott expedition huts that remain untouched since their expeditions.

The tour group will spend 11 days in Ross Sea Antarctica exploring historic sites, visiting penguin rookeries, observing seabirds, seals and whales, marvelling at the glacial ice and enjoying the enthralling landscape.

The 2025 expeditions include the option to join sea kayaking excursions with an expert guide around the subantarctic islands and Ross Sea Antarctica.

Enquiries: heritage-expeditions.com

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