There’s a pulse running through Holden Street Theatres this Adelaide Fringe season. It’s political without being preachy. Personal without being small. Across music, monologue and solo theatre, these works circle a common question:
Who gets to belong and who decides the rules?
From Bob Marley’s revolutionary rhythms to elite debate rooms, Cambridge dining halls, suburban rainstorms and eight voices channelling Adele, Holden Street Theatres’ 2026 Adelaide Fringe program is concerned with power: who holds it, who loses it, and how we survive its absence.
Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed The World
17 February – 22 March
★★★★★
Duane Forrest doesn’t just perform Marley. He explains him.
Blending soulful renditions of the classics with a history lesson on slavery, Jamaica and the birth of reggae, Forrest gently dismantles the way popular culture has sanitised Marley’s radicalism. The rebellion. The call for equality. The return to Zion. The system-challenging message that so often gets stripped away when the songs become wedding-playlist staples.
Forrest tells it all disarmingly, with warmth and a smile. He steps away from the microphones to speak directly to the audience. He invites sing-alongs. Images of his childhood and Marley’s life glow against three black panels.
Growing up in Toronto with Jamaican parents, wrestling with colourism and cultural disconnection, Forrest found pride through Marley’s music. That journey, from isolation to identity, is the beating heart of the show.
You might think you don’t like reggae. By the end, you’ll understand it, and probably love it.
The Debate
13 February – 22 March
★★★★★
A mother waits. Ambition hums beneath the surface.
From the multi-award-winning team behind Grounded and That Boy, this bold three-act drama stars Martha Lott opposite her real-life daughter Amelia Lott-Watson, a rare opportunity to watch a mother and daughter play mother and daughter.
The premise is timely in the aftermath of our social media ban: a teenage debate prodigy on the brink of national selection. A rival. A political operative mother who knows exactly how to weaponise words.
Directed by Holden Street Theatres’ new artistic director Nick Fagan, The Debate is an excavation of elite privilege and parents living vicariously and viciously through their children. Social media becomes an accelerant, taking age-old prejudices and amplifying them at scale.
Lott relishes the role of foul-mouthed villain: a campaign strategist only a mother could love. Amelia Lott-Watson charts an emotional descent so convincing that her character’s pain lingers even as she bows.
When every story can be spun, what chance does truth have?
Eat The Rich (but maybe not me mates x)
17 February – 22 March
★★★★★
Jade Franks arrives in tan activewear, Betty Boop lashes and a thick Scouse accent and detonates Cambridge.
This Fringe First winner, now in development with the team behind Adolescence, is poised to be Netflix’s next obsession. Think Fleabag meets Ricky Gervais via a culture-clash comedy in the tradition of Pygmalion and Educating Rita.
A working-class Liverpudlian secretly cleaning her own college to survive, Jade navigates the shark tank of inherited privilege. Latin quotations fly. Etiquette codes bristle. The myth of meritocracy crumbles.
At a moment when the UK, and much of the world, is scrutinising aristocracy, billionaires and invisible class barriers, this show could ignite like Guy Fawkes.
Yet beneath the politics lies something universal: leaving home. Trying to fit in. Deciding whether to assimilate or revolt.
Love Is A Game: An Adele Song Cycle
24 February – 8 March
★★★★
Finding one Adele is hard. Holden Street found eight.
Oliver John’s award-winning song cycle returns bigger and bolder, with eight powerhouse voices navigating romantic, queer, platonic and self-love through Adele’s catalogue.
Forget the Ten Tenors, this is the Eight Adeles.
There’s no single narrative thread; instead, vignettes unfold through lyrics, staging and body language. Emerald hues wash the stage. Harmonies swell. John’s near counter-tenor cuts through like glass.
An a cappella Sweetest Devotion is the standout; eight voices unaccompanied, heavenly and raw. The slick band occasionally joins in vocally, blurring the line between pit and stage.
It runs a touch longer than sixty minutes, one or two songs could be trimmed, but when the harmonies hit, you don’t mind.
The Soaking of Vera Shrimp
From Patch of Blue
17 February – 22 March
★★★★★
In a small room that feels like a living room, Vera Shrimp sits in school uniform and long socks, legs swinging, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Then she begins.
Martha Walker delivers what may become one of the highlights of the Fringe: a poignant solo show about love, grief and the death of a parent. Armed with overhead projector slides and “top facts” about the people and places in her life, Vera reveals a world children rarely get to articulate and adults rarely stop to hear.
She can read raindrops, each soaked with emotion. It’s whimsical. It’s devastating.
The show explores sensory overwhelm, misophonia, the way classroom scratches can burn the skin. It interrogates how quickly we deliver a casserole and demand the bowl back, without listening.
Yet it ends in hope: maybe we are all connected. Maybe nothing truly dies. Maybe our lives are streams of emotion returning to the heavens.
Across these works, patterns emerge.
Music as resistance.
Class as battleground.
Parenthood as ambition.
Identity as negotiation.
Grief as transformation.
Holden Street’s Fringe offering asks whether belonging is earned, inherited, fought for or simply felt. It challenges meritocracy myths, interrogates elite systems, honours cultural roots and insists that even in collapse, there is connection.
In a world saturated with curated truths and algorithmic certainty, these shows make a case for something older:
Stories told live.
Voices shared in rooms.
Communities formed in the dark.
Holden Street Theatres full program for the 2026 Adelaide Fringe can be found at their website.
Tickets: https://www.holdenstreettheatres.com/
Website: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/holdenstreettheatres/
Images supplied.
