Adelaide is the perfect festival city and its once biennial, now annual, Festival has been the pace setter for others around the country. Last year ticket buyers from outside South Australia accounted for a record 29 per cent of sales. This year’s is the third program assembled by Artistic Director David Sefton. It’s running now until 15 March.

Dance is anchored by New York’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet presenting two programs including the ‘achingly beautiful…elegant’ Orbo Novo. Returning from the UK is Improbable Theatre with a lush adults only take on Beauty and the Beast: ‘confronting but poignant and beautiful’, it comes with emphatic 18+ warnings.

From Ireland comes riverrun, derived from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, adapted and performed by Olwen Fouere. London’s Daily Telegraph say this ‘bold, funny and eloquent drama might just be life-changing.’

There’s a very varied music program, little of it to my taste, but wonderful Tafelmusik is there with House of Dreams.

It wouldn’t be Adelaide without Writers’ Week (this year not quite a week) 28 Feb-5 Mar. I counted more than 80 writers in the program, including David Marr, Don Watson, Helen Garner, Robert Dessaix and the wonderful Jane Gleeson-White; wonderful to me because she’s written two successful books about accountants Double Entry and Six Capitals. Marr’s book is The Prince about Cardinal George Pell; what can you say?