“Niina marni?” (‘Are you good?’ in Kaurna Warra, the language of the people of the Adelaide Plains, and a Kaurna way of saying, ‘Hello, how are you?’).
The opening weekend of Adelaide Fringe is, in many ways, an ideal time to visit Kaurna Miyurna Yarta (Adelaide Plains People’s Land) and the largest arts festival in the southern hemisphere. Adelaide is already thrumming with country audiences visiting the big smoke, canny locals beating the critics and Insta-influencers looking to see a show first, visiting artists and international and interstate tourists – but not so busy that it becomes overwhelming for those of us with brains oversensitive to intrusive noise and uncomfortable in jostling crowds.
ArtsHub’s Performing Arts Editor Richard Watts is visiting Adelaide Fringe and seeing a range of works across multiple art forms, while also trying to avoid festival fatigue and not burn out too quickly – especially given his loathing of hot weather (and apparent fondness for writing about himself in the third person) with Adelaide predicted to hit 38 degrees this Saturday.
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Here is his first review from the 2025 Adelaide Fringe (which features more than 1400 shows across 500 venues in its program this year): look for more Adelaide Fringe reviews from Watts and our team of reviewers in the coming days.
BITE
BITE is a transgressive, sex-positive cabaret that’s perfectly suited to its late night time slot in The Garden of Unearthly Delights, and which opens with a Welcome to Country in Kaurna Warra. What follows is a tightly directed and deliciously queer production that encapsulates – but is not limited by – the familiar ‘spiegeltent show’ format of cabaret, circus and burlesque established in 2004 by Spiegelmaestro David Bates, with The Famous Spiegeltent’s La Clique. That wildly successful production spawned a now-ubiquitous genre, and recalls the sainted Wilde’s famously attributed aphorism, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”.
In BITE, the familiar ‘spiegeltent-style’ show is queered to the max: think puppy play, literally flaming queens so hot you can feel the fire they’re utilising several rows back from the stage, and an inspired circus take on that staple of strip clubs everywhere, pole-dancing, in which the pole is not tethered to the stage but – ridden by one of the athletic performers – swings over the audience’s heads.
Familiar cabaret classics such as Cole Porter’s 1948 ‘Too Darn Hot’ (1948) and Sondheim and Bernstein’s ‘I Feel Pretty’ (1957) are reinterpreted and performed live by BITE’s MC (Mistress of Chaos) alongside more recent hits, including PnB Rock’s ‘My Ex’ (from the late rapper’s 2019 double album TrapStar Turnt PopStar), with additional music choices ranging from aggressive dubstep to banging techno. Max Mannix’s exquisite sound design – which incorporates everything from doors being unlocked and opened to the early use of a foghorn or fire alarm – deserves special praise.
Performances are uniformly excellent, resulting in a production that’s sexy, but which empowers instead of objectifies its artists. BITE celebrates diverse sexualities and reclaims them from the tired and homophobic complaint that we queers are ‘flaunting’ our sexuality and ‘shoving it down people’s throats’ – a Freudian slip if ever one was showing. Even the transitions between acts – which can let down productions with bigger budgets and greater resources – are handled gloriously here.
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From dexterously employed white powder puffs and faux-coke served to the audience on silver platters to its celebration of queerness and sex positivity, BITE is a magnificent Adelaide Fringe opener. The production’s faults are few: the lack of trans and gender-diverse artists, and queer First Nations artists, can be easily addressed by future iterations of BITE, which as a production deserves a long touring life at festivals both national and international.
Similarly, while its celebration of queer joy is evident, BITE could go further in terms of its political content, so that its already glorious style – including costumes and lighting – is matched by its powerful content. If future evolutions of BITE can find a way to emphasise trans rights without feeling didactic – at a time when conservative adherents are crashing hook-up app Grindr at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) while simultaneously throwing trans rights under the bus via the ‘LGB without the T’ social media crusade – it can only make BITE bolder and more relevant.
As it stands, BITE currently leans towards style over substance, but such a flaw can easily amended to ensure the latest work from Adelaide’s GRIT Productions gains the all-important fifth star it almost already deserves.
BITE
GRIT Productions
Key creatives:
Holly X (she/her): Founder, co-creator, co-director, co-producer and performer
Alex De Porteous (she/her): Co-Creator, co-director, co-producer and performer
Nicolás Mena (he/him): Lead choreographer and performer
Max Mannix (he/him): Sound designer
Charly Brookman (she/her): Lighting designer
Cast: Holly X (she/her), Alex De Porteous (she/her), Nicolás Mena (he/him), Carlie Hunter (she/her), Dominique Cowden (she/her), Bianca Dimattina (she/her), Charli Meath (she/her) and Ember Rose (she/her)
The Vagabond, The Garden of Unearthly Delights
21 February – 16 March at 8:45pm
Tickets: $39 to $59
The writer visited Adelaide as a guest of Adelaide Fringe
