Opus wins ‘Best Amateur Musical Comedy’ Award
Taken from AdelaideNow
ARTS writer Matt Byrne hands out the bouquets and wooden spoons for SA’s 2010 theatre season.
THIS was the year when a lack of controversy was bad for the arts. Headlines were few and far between for the industry the Festival State uses as its slogan.
Paul Grabowsky’s 2010 Adelaide Festival barely left a dent on the artistic landscape, except for the larger-than-life opera The Grand Macabre and a jetty to nowhere on the Torrens.
If it wasn’t for the return of the Northern Lights on North Tce buildings, it would have been hard to know there was a Festival on.
It was up to the Fringe and the Cabaret Festival to keep our blood pressure and interest up. The Garden of Unearthly Delights, opened earlier than ever, expanded and dominated the Fringe agenda with its packed array of venues and free entertainment. Expect even more in 2011.
New Fringe boss Greg Clarke is keen to spread the love to new and equally exciting venues.
Shows like The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer,Slingsby’s Man Covets Bird, Guy Masterson’s The Sociable Plover,Horizon Arts’ Heroine for Breakfast and My Name is Rachel Corriewere Fringe standouts. At least Adelaide got its musical mojo back with Cats reviving memories, confirmation Stephen Schwartz’s Oz revival Wicked would fly in next April and Avenue Q taking Her Majesty’s hostage.
The manic puppet show produced by Adelaide’s own Arts Asia Pacific won five Helpmann Awards to upstage Jersey Boys at the Sydney Opera House and showed Sesame Street had finally grown up.
Singular Productions’ football musical Different Fields kicked a goal, as did its star Peter Michell as the veteran footy star betting on his future.
Across the border, Adelaide’s Verity Hunt-Ballard stole the national spotlight by winning hearts in the title role in Mary Poppins, and our own Grant Piro scored the daddy of all roles in Hairspray The Musical. And the amateur musical scene produced a stunning array of SA premieres, fromSpamalot to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Curtains to Bat Boy The Musical and Spring Awakening.
The Oz-Asia Festival successfully used Korea as its main source of shows, and Slava Grigoryan’s Adelaide International Guitar Festival did better business this time with a biannual and smaller program.
State Opera’s Aida proved a major spectacle and Carrie Fisher made a memorable and very funny spectacle of herself.
Here are some of our Horatio and Yoricks awards for the best and the worst on stage in 2010.
