The best of the 2021 Sydney Festival

Our highlights of the 2021 Sydney Festival.

Sydney Festival’s Wesley Enoch, seated, with Bangarra Dance Theatre members. Picture: Britta Campion

Our pick of this year’s festival

THE (UNCERTAIN) FOUR SEASONS

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra will give the first performances at the Headland, a large outdoor stage that has been erected at Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour. It is a spectacular setting in which to enjoy some of the best of this year’s festival performances, under the stars and with the Harbour Bridge as a backdrop. The Headland was to have opened on Wednesday night with The Pulse, from Adelaide acrobatic troupe Gravity and Other Myths. While border closures have forced the cancellation of those performances, the Headland now will open with the SSO on January 12. The performance, called The (Uncertain) Four Seasons, uses Vivaldi’s famous music and sounds that evoke the world’s changing climate, based on climate prediction data. Introduced by filmmaker Damon Gameau. The Headland, Barangaroo Reserve, January 12.

SUNSHINE SUPER GIRL

Her winning smile and unbeatable skill on the court made Evonne Goolagong Australia’s sunshine super girl. This theatrical story of her life is a Sydney Festival highlight and coincides with the 50th anniversary of her first singles win at Wimbledon, in 1971. Andrea James, a Yorta-Yorta/Gunaikurnai woman and playwright, is behind this on-stage biography, saying that there is much in Goolagong’s story that is uplifting but also tragic and sad. Actress Tuuli Narkle takes centre court as Goolagong. Sydney Town Hall, Friday to January 17. Waitlist for tickets

DOUGLAS STUART

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize.

If Douglas Stuart’s novel Shuggie Bain isn’t on your summer reading list, it should be. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood growing up among the unemployed poor in Glasgow, and what he had to do to escape disadvantage.

It’s grim, and grimly humorous, such is Stuart’s sharply observant writing. Stuart now works as a fashion designer in New York, and pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of winning the Booker Prize with Shuggie Bain, his debut novel. He appears in a live-stream discussion from New York. Carriageworks, January 16.
SPIRIT: A RETROSPECTIVE

As the pre-eminent Indigenous performing arts group, Bangarra Dance Theatre could not be overlooked by Sydney Festival director Wesley Enoch, who has celebrated First Nations creativity throughout his five-year tenure. Spirit: A Retrospective looks back over the highlights of Bangarra’s incredible repertoire from the past 30 years, including work by its longstanding artistic director, Stephen Page. The festival also is screening a new documentary about Bangarra and the Page brothers, Firestarter, directed by Wayne Blair and Nel Minchin. The Headland, Barangaroo Reserve, January 20 to 24.

FUTURE REMAINS

Mezzosoprano Jessica O'Donoghue. Picture: Adam Yip

Sydney Chamber Opera is a small and perfectly formed contemporary opera company under the artistic directorship of Jack Symonds. In this double bill, Symonds presents one of his favourite pieces, Leos Janacek’s song cycle about love and delusion, Diary of One Who Disappeared, beautifully staged on a minimalist set and directed by Alexander Berlage. It features tenor Andrew Goodwin as the young man who falls helplessly in love with a free-spirited girl, played by mezzosoprano Jessica O’Donoghue. Janacek’s piece is paired with a new piece by Huw Belling, Fumeblind Oracle, that imagines an unexpected next chapter to the tale. Carriageworks, Wednesday to Sunday.