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Circus-cabaret Spectacular, La Ronde Makes Its Melbourne Debut At Spiegel Haus This October

01/10/2026 Breaking News

The five-star circus cabaret sensation from Strut & Fret, the creators of Blanc de Blanc Encore and Late Night Vice, arrives in Melbourne for the first time, following a huge national tour.

Melbourne, get ready to surrender to the spectacular.

Following critically acclaimed seasons across Australia and a swag of five-star reviews, La Ronde will make its highly anticipated Melbourne debut at Spiegel Haus Melbourne from Wednesday 21 October, bringing its intoxicating blend of world-class circus, cabaret, comedy, live music, glamour and jaw-dropping physical artistry to the heart of the CBD. The Melbourne season follows hot on the heels of an extended 260-show residency in Sydney where La Ronde has racked up more than 1600 five-star audience reviews.

From the internationally renowned creators of Blanc de Blanc Encore and Late Night Vice, La Ronde brings together some of the world’s most extraordinary circus performers for one whirlwind night of spectacle, seduction and skill.

Inside the velvet-draped Spiegeltent, audiences are invited into a world where glittering bodies spin overhead, gravity is defied and the impossible becomes reality.

“Saucy, sensational and undeniably sexy.” ★★★★★ The Advertiser
“All-killer no-filler.” ★★★★★ THE LIST
“Glitz, glamour and incredible displays of talent.” ★★★★★ The AU Review
“If you only see one show (at Adelaide Fringe), make it La Ronde.” ★★★★★ Time Out

Featuring an international cast of elite performers, La Ronde is a high-energy collision of circus, cabaret, comedy and live music, with breathtaking aerial acts, feats of strength, acrobatics, comedy and artistry performed up close and personal in the intimate surrounds of the Spiegeltent.

Among them:
– Acrobat and cabaret artist – Adam Malone (Australia)
– Fire-loving provocateur – Danik Abishe (Australia)
– Guerilla Comedy artist – David Erikson (Sweden)
– Pyramid trapeze aerialist – Diana Bondarenko (Ukraine)
– Singer and dancer – Dorival Junco (Cuba)
– Flying pole virtuoso – Sergiy Mishchurenko (Ukraine)
– Hair-hanging sensation – Zoe Kelly (New Zealand)

Strut & Fret and La Ronde Producer, Jess Copas hinted at what to expect:
“Every act in La Ronde pushes the boundaries of what the human body can do, combining extraordinary technique with humour, sensuality, danger and a healthy dose of irreverence. And with the action taking place on and around a central stage (hence the name La Ronde/The Round), the show feels very intimate as the performers are never far away.”

The result is a night of circus, cabaret and pure physical artistry that is as glamorous as it is outrageous.

Spiegel Haus Melbourne Creative Director Chris Mitchell said Melbourne audiences were in for something unlike anything they had experienced at the venue before.
“La Ronde is everything we love about live entertainment. It is bold, glamorous, cheeky, surprising and incredibly skilful, with some of the world’s most extraordinary performers bringing the stage to life right in front of the audience.

“We have watched La Ronde build an incredible following around Australia and we can’t wait for Melbourne audiences to experience it for themselves.”

REVIEWS: A SPECTACLE THAT HAS AUDIENCES TALKING

After receiving 11 five-star reviews in its debut season at Adelaide Fringe 2025, the production has continued to attract critical acclaim.

The accolades have continued, with Australian arts and entertainment publications embracing the production’s extraordinary combination of physical artistry, glamour and sheer spectacle.

“Breathtaking and wonderous” – ★★★★★ The Au Review
“La Ronde is truly the best show we’ve seen yet.” – ★★★★★ About Adelaide
“A collection of the planet’s most exhilarating variety artists.” – ★★★★★ Hi Fi Way
“A thrilling cocktail of tease and astonishment that excites and amazes beyond imagination.” – Broadway World
“Leave(s) the audience in awe with their mastery of physicality and creativity.” – Australian Arts Review
“A captivating and dazzling theatrical experience” – Theatre Travels
“Extravagant… stunning… magnificent… fun” – ★★★★★ PLAY & GO
“‘timeless artistry”’ – ★★★★★ ENTERTAINMENT NOW
“Wow. Just wow!”– ★★★★★ KIDS IN ADELAIDE
“Not to be missed!” – ★★★★★ MY ADELAIDE TRIBE
“Outstanding.” – ★★★★★ THE ADELAIDE REVIEW TEAM
“it’s easy to forget they’re mere mortals.” – ★★★★★ FIFTY+SA

Strictly for audiences aged 18+, La Ronde contains mild nudity, strobe lighting and theatrical haze.

Season opens: La Ronde opens at Spiegel Haus Melbourne on Wednesday 21 October 2026 at 7:00pm.
Media Night: Tuesday 27 October 2026 at 7:00pm
Venue: Spiegel Haus Melbourne, 217 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne CBD
Season: 21 October 2026 to 31 January 2027 – Wed-Sun
Tickets: spiegelhausmelb.com | From $69:00 + booking fee
Duration: 90 minutes including interval

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Dancing Through the Storm: Finding Light in Glimpses of Heaven

01/10/2026 Nicole Salinger⭐⚡🎭🎪

Glimpses of Heaven Rating

★★★★★

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Upstairs in Motley Bauhaus’ cabaret room, I come upon a stage set as the aftermath of a torrential storm. A neglected apartment in shambles – with its occupant nowhere to be seen.

Open bottles of alcohol and soda cans lie half-hazardly across the floor. Fancy women’s clothing slumber in a supine position. So very unfitting, I wish to shake them clean and lift them off the dirty carpet.

The pièce de résistance? A pair of beige boots, stuck mischievously on top of one another on the side of a bookshelf with superglue. As if alive, ready to run amok – but have nowhere left to hide.

Yet above the disarray, progress is being made. Moving boxes are labelled. Rubbish bags are being filled. And within each effort to pack up this apartment, a quick-witted, playful young girl, Hannah, mills around, ushering us to a trip down memory-lane. Namely, the tumultuous experience her musician mother had struggling with addiction, and the complicated relationship they underwent to beat it into submission.

With captivating off-the-wall humour, cleverly directed by Damian Callinan, props are in fact used onstage with a mission – to reel us in further by unlocking Hannah’s personal memories of this deeply challenging time. A dusty Aria award statue is held up to the light not for reverence, but as a weapon of mass destruction – due to its sharp, pointy head. A single shoe is startingly transformed into an ashtray, complete with cigarette butts standing up inside of it – a brand-new work of art inspired by a female rock star, spiralling downwards.

But as the show progresses, and Hannah’s heartbreaking story unravels, one can see through the paradoxes of addiction: that two things can be true at the same time. Like a see-saw, memories can exist between tenderness and darkness. Little ditties can be sung on a guitar to settle nerves and balance heaviness. A Spice Girls dance can ground and steady us through the wobbles of confusion. The loving eyes of a mother can start to slip away and become unrecognisable to a daughter’s eyes, even though her heart is still pounding strongly.

That flying a little too close to the sun can bubble under the weight of pressure – of an unforgiving music industry ready to take its next victim.

Complexities aside, here is where I congratulate the shows writer and star, Mary-Agnes O’Loughlin. For not only providing a beautiful voice and graceful miming movements to bring this tale to life, but in honouring Hannah’s truth of a very headstrong girl having to deal with a mother experiencing life-threatening addictions.

Not by shutting it out. Nor by dodging it or avoiding it. But by dancing through its storms.

That for Hannah, fortitude was needed. This meant choosing to dance through the fire. Through the highs and the lows. Through bamboozlement and confusion. For the show’s star, Mary-Agnes O’Loughlin, speaks a different language of bravery – using rhythmic movement as a psychological coping mechanism – to let the ugliness of her mum’s addiction flow through her and be released. In order to see it as a seperate entity – to the unconditional love she has for her mum. Planting her at the centre of her mother’s recovery journey, even beyond the disease itself – helping save her life in the process.

In all, Glimpses of Heaven, weaves a beautifully balanced tale of how a mother’s love can affect our soul’s growth, through the good and bad. That each family have their own set of dynamics, even if not set by social norms. That a mother’s love, even mixed with complication, can still lead us forward: to the full experience of being human.

To book tickets to Glimpses of Heaven, please visit https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/whats-on/events/glimpses-of-heaven.

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When Life Gives You Grapes: An Existential Comedy

29/09/2026 Nicole Salinger⭐⚡🎭🎪

Ode To A Grape Rating

★★★★★

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As I enter the Motley Bauhaus saloon-style pub in Carlton, I am infused with 1970’s nostalgia, bedecked with retro-style posters of shows-gone-by, and funky music beating in the background. Representing the liberated spirit of artistic creation, a barman serves drinks and food while his voice echoes over a loudspeaker, directing fringe-goers to their designated garret-style rooms to see their individual shows.

Speaking of the spirit of the Bauhaus, I enter up a staircase to tiny 25-seater wooden theatrette; surrounded by layers of exposed plaster and centuries-old brickwork. To the right and left of where I sit, are two barstools each flanked by bowls of green, purple and black grapes. A central theme of a show I am about to see called ‘Ode To A Grape’, the latter title celebrating the magical properties of a grape, a multi-purpose fruit that is not only sweet in nature, but can transform itself into a multitude of nutritional and eco-friendly benefits for the world-at-large.

In the middle of these two stools stands a red velvet draped curtain, parting ways for us to meet ‘Johann’, a angsty German-born existentialist with slicked-back hair. Starkly dressed in black with the peacock-ish air of socialist angst and radical views, Johann first expresses his passionate love for grapes, explaining how he has moved to his new hometown of Tīrau, New Zealand, where he seeks to fulfil his childhood dreams as a poetic artist.

In fact, tonight, we have come to Johann’s book launch of ‘Ode To A Grape’, his book of truly terrible poetry he tries to recite onstage for the very first time. Believing -that it is HE who was born to be a true poet of his time. That it is HE who is born to spread the word: about his oppressive upbringing in Germany and his love for grapes.

But instead, as time passes, Johann’s mind overtakes himself, and he starts ranting about the oppression of cows. His mind is going haywire. So much so, that I run into a confusion, asking myself – is this a show about sustainability? Of animal exploitation? Of terribly-made sandwiches being destroyed by harsh parenting causing inner child trauma?

Well, it is all of those actually, much to the audience’s delight. For this is where our night of satire begins.

For in between Johann’s preaching of grapes and cows, interruptions arise to foil his launch. An inner child that is split in two, torn between a sweet sounding Scottish voice positive about his poetic dreams versus that of an inner demon seeking to berate his over-inflated sense of confidence – to talk him out of sharing his woeful poetry with the world.

Starring Em Barrett, a native New Zealander, ‘Ode to A Grape’ is a cult-comedy, a call-to-arms about society-at-large, seen through the eyes of the bumbling Johann, one in which Barrett has perfected to the bone since 2022. For Barrett not only masters the German accent, but also the grandiose physicality of a tormented, angst-ridden male. One who is in denial of his deplorable poetic talents, which, as the show progresses, becomes incredibly funny.

One moment that brought the audience into the palm of Barrett’s hands was her clever use of a video depicting cows as gentle giants, as we see a video projection of a herd of cows behind a fence, listening to Johann’s partner, Nigel, playing the ukulele. It is here that Johann engages us in a mode of audience participation: a moo-ing sing-a-long of sorts; to help fight the affliction and the commodity of cows – to the audience’s delight.

This show is a must-see for fans of comedy, satire, and the spirit of Bauhaus. For shows that don’t exactly fit the mold, but engage us with raw, comedic undertones and imperfect scripting. A show where anything goes in the moment, one grape at a time.

To book tickets to Ode To A Grape, please visit https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/whats-on/events/ode-to-a-grape.

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Cast Announced For Premiere Of Live Storytelling Concert The Trumpet Of The Swan

28/09/2026 Breaking News

Opera Australia has today announced the cast of The Trumpet of the Swan, a family friendly, live storytelling concert that will premiere at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre from 20 to 22 November 2026.

Helpmann Award-winning actor Bert Labonté, as Sam the Storyteller, will guide audiences through this enchanting musical journey, adapted from E. B. White’s (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little) charming children’s classic for the stage by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman (The Secret Garden, The Colour Purple), and with music by Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Parade).

Joining La Bonté onstage, playing Father Swan will be versatile actor and performer Ben Mingay who wowed Melbourne audiences earlier this year in OA’s Gilbert & Sullivan celebration concert, and powerhouse vocalist Marney McQueen, most recently known for her portrayal of Celine Dion in Titanique, as Mother Swan.

Completing the cast will be accomplished screen and stage actor Grant Piro, and local Melbourne based artists, Scout Hook and Arjun Tiwari, who will bring Louis’s world to life through movement and imagination.

Directed by the award-winning Tyran Parke, who is currently Head of Musical Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts, the concert will be led by Australian-based British conductor Chad Kelly, and acclaimed Melbourne-born choreographer Freya List will add another dimension of storytelling to the performance.

Featuring a soaring score performed live, onstage by Orchestra Victoria, The Trumpet of the Swan tells the story of Louis, a swan born without a voice, as he learns to express himself through music and find his place in the world.

A hit at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, this beloved tale of friendship and self-discovery comes to life as a magical concert experience and a delightful introduction to live orchestral music for all ages.

Creatives

Conductor: Chad Kelly
Book: Marsha Norman
From the novel by: E.B. White
Music: Jason Robert Brown
Director: Tyran Parke
Choreographer: Freya List

Performance information

7:00pm 20 November
12:00pm 21 & 22 November
3:00pm 21 November

Running time

Approximately 80 minutes, no interval.

Performed in English.

Cast

Sam the Storyteller: Bert Labonte
Father Swan and others: Ben Mingay
Mother Swan and others: Marney McQueen
Louis’s thoughts, voice of Louis and others: Grant Piro
Serena, Sam’s Love and others: Scout Hook
Louis, Sam’s friend, the Swan: Arjun Tiwari
Orchestra Victoria

Bookings

Child tickets from $55 (+ booking fee)
Adult tickets from $79 (+ booking fee)
Family 4+ Offer $55 per ticket (+ booking fee)

Opera Australia Box Office (03) 9685 3700
www.opera.org.au

Regent Theatre, Melbourne

A Novel Symphony for Actors and Orchestra
Based on the Book by E.B. White
Book by Marsha Norman, Music by Jason Robert Brown

This adaptation of E.B White’s “Trumpet of the Swan” was commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and was first produced at the Kennedy Center in December 2008.

By arrangement with ORiGiN Theatrical on behalf of Theatrical Rights Worldwide, New York.

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