Revisor @ Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide 19/3/2023

Kidd Pivot is a renowned Canadian Dance company led by Crystal Pite and together with playwright Jonathon Young, they have created this fantastic show. In 2017 the same creative team brought the equally remarkable Betroffenheit to the Adelaide Festival. In Revisor, eight Kidd Pivot performers dance and lip sync to some famous Canadian actors’ recorded dialogue.

The story is based on Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, a play from 1836 where a case of mistaken identity and political corruption combine to hilarious effect. The way the dancers lip sync to the actor’s words in a fluid, funny and highly expressive style is phenomenal.

I really appreciate performances that are like nothing I have seen before. At the start it was comedic and it soon became dark and sinister. The middle section of the play the dancers reappear in their rehearsal gear and reenact parts of the play we have just seen. Sometimes their movements were more fluid in this section and sometimes you would see them glitch and twitch in this scintillating section of the performance. The third part neatly wraps up things and was a dazzling end to the festival for me.

When Revisor ended the audience rose to a standing ovation in the quickest time I have ever seen. Revisor was one of my highlights to an already incredible 2023 Adelaide Festival that included Lorde, Maureen Harbinger of Death, A Little Life, The Sheep Song, Jekyll and Hyde and Air Play and artistic director, Ruth Mackenzie and team should be commended for their fantastic selection. I would love to see more Kidd Pivot works in future Adelaide Festivals.

Adelaide Festival Review By Richard De Pizzol