Between The Covers is the perfect blend of bookclub and cabaret
Presented by: Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed: 15 June 2025
In the 2024 Cabaret Festival, Between The Covers looked at The Great Gatsby. This year, the focus comes much closer to home, with Australian author Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach. The full house is evident that Between The Covers is fast becoming a festival favourite among both cabaret and literature lovers. And with intelligent, thoughtful conversation and superb live music, it’s very easy to see why.
The conversation is led by Adelaide Cabaret Festival Artistic Director Virginia Gay, South Australian journalistic icon Annabel Crabb, and Iraqi-Australian writer and playwright Lur Alghurabi. They carefully pull apart and examine the themes in The Children’s Bach, at times respectfully disagreeing with each other, but always expressing admiration for Helen Garner’s precise writing. Garner’s book uses words so sparingly (the novella is only 150 pages) but each one contains a vital purpose, making them precious. In Lur Alghurabi’s words, ‘It is like reading gold leaf.’
The Children’s Bach, set in Melbourne, is based around the lives and complicated relationships of married couple Dexter and Athena, their two children (one of whom is autistic, though the word isn’t used in the book), Dexter’s longtime friend Elizabeth and her teenage sister Vicki, and Elizabeth’s sort-of boyfriend Philip and his tween daughter Poppy. Music is a strong theme throughout the book, and serves as a symbol of identity for many of the characters: inadequacy and invisibility for Athena, virility for Philip, or a way for Dexter to continue worshipping the past.
Virginia Gay, Annabel Crabb and Lur Alghurabi pick apart these themes and also compare them to topics found in Helen Garner’s published diaries and other works, including the common opinion that a book about everyday people, about domesticity, has less inherent worth than a ‘grand’ book about war or politics. This extends into an examination of the character of Athena and the other women in the book, who in various ways are viewed as having inadequacies or being invisible in their feminine roles.
Breaking up this fascinating conversation was music by Australian jazz singer Michelle Nicolle, who gave us some of her ingenious jazz arrangements of Bach, as well as some jazzed up Cold Chisel (Forever Now) and Hunters & Collectors (Throw Your Arms Around Me). I’m a sucker for a good mashup, however, so the highlight for me was the mashup of ‘Round Midnight with JS Bach’s Fugue in G Minor. Michelle’s voice was haunting through scats that cleverly incorporated motives from Bach’s works, and warm and inviting through the tunes with lyrics. Michelle was accompanied by local talents Dave McEvoy on piano and Bonnie Grynchuk on upright bass.
Between The Covers is the perfect blend of bookclub and cabaret, and if this event is part of next year’s Cabaret Festival I strongly recommend you get a ticket no matter what book is being discussed. You are guaranteed to be fascinated, inspired, and entertained.
Reviewed by Kristin Stefanoff
Photo credit: Claudio Raschella
Venue: The Banquet Room, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: ended
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