Away

Last weekend it was Adelaide, this weekend it was New York. Kinda!

David was invited to a long weekend at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, to write about it for his paper, and review a couple of the shows that will be heading to Perth.

He had a hotel room for two and two tickets to the shows of his choice, so I scrabbled together a few frequent flyer points, packed the heels and the leopard-skin coat and off we went.

Well! It was fun from the moment we landed. What a great city! What a fantastic festival! We crammed in eight shows from Friday's opening gala concert to a late Sunday night event.

We had Saturday brekkie at the Adelaide central markets and dropped in at the South Australian Art Gallery, and on Sunday we hired a car and with a new journo friend from Sydney,  headed for the beautiful hills, with another brekkie at Hahndorf (above) and lightning stops at a couple of wineries.

The rolling hills are stunningly beautiful, and it's only about 30 minutes from the CBD. So you can work in the city and live in the bush and have the absolute best of both worlds. Sigh. We loved every moment of it.

For more info about the cabaret festival, you can read David's excellent round-up here.

Last Monday, it was off the plane after a very dodgy flight in nasty weather and home in time to do a couple of hours' work, then straight back into the week.

Then, on Friday night, David and I went to a truly wonderful show, How to Succeed in Business, at the Regal Theatre in Subi, the big annual show put on by the music theatre students from the WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).

We are huge fans of WAAPA shows –  as you know, I am loathe to go to live theatre in Perth, or anywhere, but I will always go to a WAAPA musical. This is a very rare chance to see a big-production Broadway musical brought to life on the stage with all the trimmings: stunning performances, faultless singing, song-n-dance routines, an orchestra in the pit, fabulous costumes, scenery changes ... it's superb. You can settle back in your seat with your choc bomb and be thoroughly entertained.

The New York state of mind continued early the next morning at the Art Gallery of WA with my best friend Shelley and her family. We had bagels and coffee at the Art Gallery of WA and a talk by the director of MoMa and our very own AGWA director, Stefano Carboni. It was to launch the gallery's big new exhibition from MoMa, From Picasso to Warhol, which we then explored before the doors opened. 

Here's a pic Shelley took of Wayne and me planning how we could make our own version of one of the wonderful Alexander Calder kinetic sculptures!