Adelaide Festival reveals exclusive international acts in 2025 program

A Spanish flamenco superstar and an iconic Irish actor are among artists who will make exclusive Australian debuts at the 2025 Adelaide Festival.

Next year’s Adelaide Festival will be branded as “Australia’s international festival” with works by Spanish contemporary flamenco dancer Rocio Molina, acclaimed Irish actor Stephen Rea and UK theatre company Forced Entertainment as part of its full program released on Monday.

Spanish flamenco dancer Rocio Molina will perform at the 2025 Adelaide Festival in Caida del Cielo (Fallen from Heaven). Picture: Simone Fratini

A new one-man play starring UK actor Samuel Barnett, from TV series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and performances by Polish pianist Hania Rani, Rwandan actor and author Dorcy Rugamba and Irish singer Camille O’Sullivan will also be among the international roster of acts.

Artistic director Brett Sheehy, who returned after leading the 2006 and 2008 events, said that in its 65th year the Adelaide Festival was “rightly deserving its moniker” of Australia’s international festival.

“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,” Sheehy said.

The 2025 program includes previously announced shows such as the Finnish opera Innocence, Club Amour from late German choreographer Pina Bausch’s company Tanztheater Wuppertal, and US singer Cat Power’s recreation of Bob Dylan’s infamous 1966 “Royal Albert Hall” concert.

Irish actor Stephen Rea will perform in Krapp’s Last Tape. Picture: Pato Cassinoni

Samuel Barnett in Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic

Rea, who starred in 1992 film The Crying Game, will make his exclusive Australian debut in fellow Irishman Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape.

Performed to a mix of live music combining original compositions, flamenco and rock, Molina’s exclusive show Caida del Cielo (Fallen from Heaven) is described as “an explosive, theatrical experience”.

Forced Entertainment will present Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare, performing all 36 of the Bard’s plays on a table, using household objects as the casts.

Sheehy said the program, which runs from February 28 to March 16, has 65 events including 15 Adelaide exclusives, 11 world premieres and nine Australian premieres.

Australian shows will include the stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s Love Stories, theatre work My Cousin Frank, and the Warumpi Band rock musical Big Name, No Blankets.

Full program at adelaidefestival.com.au

SA WEEKEND ON SATURDAY: SPECIAL FESTIVAL EDITION

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2025 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

Irish actor Stephen Rea will perform in Krapp’s Last Tape. Picture: Pato Cassinoni

Krapp’s Last Tape

Dunstan Playhouse, February 27 to March 8

Irish actor Stephen Rea, of The Crying Game fame, brings to life fellow countryman Samuel Beckett’s sharp wit in this masterpiece, as an old man revisits the tapes he recorded in his younger years in a journey of self-discovery and reflection on the inevitable march of time.

Caida del Cielo (Fallen from Heaven)

Her Majesty’s Theatre, February 28 to March 3

Spanish choreographer and dancer Rocio Molina shakes up the flamenco tradition with a drum kit and electric rock guitar. n a radical celebration of womanhood, from virtuous beauty to bondage-clad toreador, and a bloodied supernatural being.

Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen

Space Theatre, February 26 to March 2

Samuel Barnett, star of The History Boys and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, plays a permanently single, professionally neurotic, stand-up comedian who finally meets his Mr Right and then does everything wrong.

Club Amour

Festival Theatre, March 10-16

The late German choreographer Pina Bausch’s influential work Cafe Muller is paired with two works from new Tanztheater Wuppertal artistic director Boris Charmatz’s repertoire, Aatt Enen Tionon and Herses, Duo.

Finnish opera Innocence opera, directed by Simon Stone. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Innocence

Festival Theatre, February 28 to March 5

Set on a two-storey revolving set, this acclaimed contemporary Finnish opera alternates between events at a wedding reception and a shooting which took place a decade earlier at an international school.

Camille O’Sullivan – Loveletter

Her Majesty’s Theatre, March 4-5

Irish chanteuse O’Sullivan sings songs of love and loss inspired by recently departed Irish friends Sinead O’Connor and The Pogues’ singer Shane MacGowan, as well as influences ranging from David Bowie and Leonard Cohen to Jacques Brel.

Trent Dalton’s Love Stories

Dunstan Playhouse, March 12-16

Journalist Trent Dalton spent two months on a prominent street corner in Brisbane, asking Australians from all walks of life one simple thing: “Can you please tell me a love story?” This stage adaptation captures those wise, poignant, funny and moving depictions of love in all its guises.

Big Name, No Blankets

Her Majesty’s Theatre, March 14-16

A new rock musical which celebrates the journey of the Warumpi Band, known

for its anthems Blackfella/Whitefella, My Island Home and Jailanguru Pakarnu, as the Northern Territory group navigates the political divides between bush and city, white and black, and fame and family.

Full program and bookings at adelaidefestival.com.au