The Promise @ Festival Centre, Adelaide 7/3/2024

Thursday night at the Space Theatre I witnessed an engaging and enthralling performance by Wende and her three piece band. Wende is one of the Netherlands’ most successful musical artists and has released many albums over the last twenty years and has millions of streams on streaming platforms.

Wende starts the show imagining we are in London at the Royal Court Theatre which is where this performance was formulated. Wende worked with five female playwrights from different backgrounds, in different stages of their lives and with different writing styles. All five are incredible storytellers. Wende wanted to write songs with them that featured out-of-the-ordinary subject matter that had not been covered before. She asked the five playwrights to consider these subjects: What does loneliness sound like at 3 am? What about 6 am? How does courage sound? How does a curse sound? How can you be strong, soft and weak at the same time? If you decide you do not want to have a child how does the ritual of that choice sound? The concert then begins with the haunting Dark Black Pool, mostly Wende singing with sparse piano accompaniment.

Her band are Nils Davidse, Emma King & Midori Jaeger and they are all fantastic on piano, keyboards, double bass and drums.

This concert had many highlights. Beast Undone was brilliant with its bombastic music and singing and hopeful chorus of “A new day is coming”. In the heartbreaking The Promise Wende sings “Goodbye child of mine” to a a child who does not exist as she decided not to have children. The final song of the set was both the moving and touching song The Prayer with Wende singing “It’s not light yet but it’s getting there” and it had Wende in the centre of the room with a single white light focussed on her.

The material presented is rich and each song affects you on a visceral level, and in Wende’s words, every song is an arrow.

The encore was Let It Be with everyone joyously joining in on the infectious chorus “Let it be a chorus, the whole fucking forest, we are the whole fucking forest” before loud applause at the end to give Wende and her band a well-deserved standing ovation.

In the after-performance Q&A, the Adelaide Festival artistic director Ruth Mackenzie told Wende that although it was Wende’s first time in Adelaide she assured her it wouldn’t be the last. I hope this is so! I also hope that at least the audio of this incredible performance be released one day soon.

One of the playwrights asked Wende when they were formulating the show “Why a song”, to which Wende replied, “Because there are some things that can only be sung”.

Adelaide Festival By Richard De Pizzol

For tickets and show info head to the Adelaide Festival…