The Ten Best Things to See at Melbourne Festival 2016

The most bittersweet show on this year’s program, David Bowie: Nothing Has Changed shapes up as the ultimate tribute to the man known as Ziggy Stardust. Acclaimed musicians including iOTA, Deborah Conway, Tim Rogers, Steve Kilbey and Adalita will join the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on stage at Hamer Hall to perform a set list of Bowie’s all-time greatest hits, from ‘Space Oddity’ to his swansong, ‘Lazarus’. A must for Bowie fans, or music lovers in general — as if you can be one without the other. 

This year’s festival will start with a bang, thanks to Basque street theatre company Deabru Beltzak. For two decades, the company has performed the traditional Correfoc (or, fire run) in cities around the world. Now, for three nights only, they’re bringing their pyrotechnic display to Federation Square. Pounding drums, elaborate costumes and breathtaking fireworks combine in this after-dark parade, beginning at the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets before snaking its way through the city.  Don’t stand too close though — you don’t want to get burnt.

With a lot of the shows at Melbourne Festival, it’s hard to get an idea what to expect from the name alone. But that’s certainly not the case with Haircuts by Children, in which brave volunteers (if you’re one of them, you can register online) will be placed at the mercy of pre-teens with scissors. Conceived by Canadian artist Darren O’Donnell, the work explores the extent to which we are willing to trust and empower future generations.

Held over two weekends, the first pop-up haircut station will be held at Razor Dolls in Windsor on October 15 and 16 before it moves to Fur Hairdressing in Fitzroy for October 22 and 23. The upside? You get a free haircut. The downside? There’s no guarantee it’ll be any good.

Six Catholic schoolgirls travel to Edinburgh for a choral competition. What could possibly go wrong? In Melbourne for the very first time, the National Theatre of Scotland presents Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, a raucous production about “singing, sex and Sambuca”. Adapted from Alan Warner’s novel The Sopranos, with music by everyone from ELO to Bach, the show was a smash with critics and audiences in the UK, and is one of the obvious highlights in the theatre section of this year’s program.

An intricate, criss-crossing lattice of shimmering red lines, The Home Within stands out as one of the most striking installations at this year’s Melbourne Festival. Created by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, who is visiting Australia for the very first time, the towering structure is described in the program as combining “the weight of architecture and the ephemerality of organic life”. You can find it at various locations around town between October 6-23 — first at Deakin Edge in Federation Square, then at Meat Market in North Melbourne, before finishing up at Melbourne Town Hall.

Celebrate five incredible decades of groundbreaking science fiction at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. As trekkers and music lovers stretch out on the grass and gaze up at the stars in wonder, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will go boldly where it’s never gone before, performing a medley of music from the Star Trek universe, alongside various iconic clips from the deck of the Starship Enterprise. Beam us up.

How do you make it in the theatre when you’re neurologically incapable of sticking to a script? That was the challenge faced by Jess Thom, whose Tourette’s compels her to shout out words like “hedgehog” and “biscuit” thousands of times each day. A comedic exploration of a misunderstood psychological condition, by its nature no two performances of Backstage in Biscuit Land are the same. Making its Australian premiere at this year’s Melbourne Festival, the performances will be “relaxed”, welcoming audience members with learning disabilities, movement disorders and other physical and neurological conditions that might otherwise prevent them from enjoying a night out at the theatre.

One of the strangest and most distinctive animated films in living memory is getting the live score treatment at this year’s Melbourne Festival. The tale of a kidnapped cyclist, his plucky grandmother and a trio of music hall singers, Sylvian Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville is an absolute delight, not least of all thanks to Benoît Charest’s wonderful musical score. The composer to will attend a pair of screenings at the Melbourne Recital Centre, where he’ll conduct a live performance by his band Le Terrible Orchestre de Belleville while the movie plays in the background. The group will also play a pair of gigs at The Toff in Town, if you want to hear what else it is they’re capable of.

Contemporary dance meets figure skating in this critically acclaimed show from Canada’s Le Patin Libre. Five skaters will take to the rink at the O’Brien Group Arena (aka that ice skating rink in Docklands), where they’ll trade sequinned outfits for streetwear and a pulse-pounding soundtrack. On ice from October 15, Vertical Influences shapes up as one of the most intriguing dance works on the program at this year’s Melbourne Festival. Just make sure you bring a coat, because things could get a wee bit chilly.

The latest artistic endeavour from experimental filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson, best known for his divisive features Ruin and Hail, Breaking Waves is a multi-screen installation that charts the life’s work and obsession of a kindred spirit: Melbourne-born composer Percy Grainger. On display at the Ian Potter Museum of Art throughout the duration of this year’s Melbourne Festival, the film combines fragments of Grainger’s music along with high speed, close-up cinematography. The end result aims to provide “an impressionistic gateway into the motivations that drove a singular artist”.