First of all, let me extend a very warm welcome to all Seniors Card members and WeekendPlus subscribers. I can’t wait to share the joys of the 2025 Adelaide Cabaret Festival with you all.

Virginia Gay, Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2025 Artistic Director. Photo by: Claudio Raschella.

There are a thousand things that I love about cabaret: its wit, its mischief, its innate sense of irreverence, sex and sass. And its jokes, my loves, oh, the wild, glorious jokes. This festival has always had a particular love for performances that pour off the stage and into the foyers afterwards, where they’re met by you, in all your sparkles and finery, drinking champagne like it’s water. My kind of people, and my kind of hydration...

This year, we’re leaning into that, with shows that dissolve the barrier between audience and performer even further. Where the music bubbles up through you as with our headliner Jacob Collier; or where you yourself become the stars of the show, as in Marry Your Friends, or There Is Nothing Like A Game!. As we celebrate our 25th year, we’ll glory in our brilliant legacy acts and crane our necks towards the electric future of cabaret. But we also wanted to honour the way in which cabaret has always scoffed at those audience/performer barriers (as anybody who’s had either Reuben’s or Rizo’s head in their lap at previous festivals can attest). Live performance is always for, in service of, and cannot happen without you — our beloved and bedazzled audience.

Cabaret is a magical little art form — I can’t tell you what an honour it is to have helmed this sparkling and outrageous ship for a little while. Thank you for having me, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and every single audience member who has welcomed me so warmly. You’re a sequin-covered beacon of brilliance in the middle of an Adelaide winter. So come here, let us gather you close to our warm, weird, and wonderful bosom... and let’s parrrrrrty.

Virginia Gay, Artistic Director

Office for Ageing Well and Seniors Card are proud Program Partners of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

View the full 2025 program here: 2025 Program – Adelaide Cabaret Festival

More information from the 2025 Adelaide Cabaret Festival edition of WeekendPlus: