Tickets go on sale today (26 August) for the first two productions announced for the 2027 Adelaide Festival, bringing new works from acclaimed directors Romeo Castellucci and Barrie Kosky to South Australia.

Castellucci’s production of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Kosky’s K will be Adelaide Festival exclusives, with both directors returning to a festival with which they have longstanding associations.

Romeo Castellucci’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Photo © Salzburg Festival/Monika Rittershaus

Bluebeard’s Castle, which premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2022, will receive its Australian premiere at the Festival Theatre from 26 February to 2 March. Castellucci, whose previous Adelaide Festival productions include Go Down Moses (2016) and Mozart’s Requiem (2020), places audiences inside the psychological world of Judith, the newlywed wife of Duke Bluebeard.

The production replaces naturalistic staging with a spectacular water-filled set illuminated by fire as Judith opens the seven forbidden doors of Bluebeard’s castle. Each chamber reveals another of his secrets while exposing the increasingly turbulent layers of Judith’s psyche.

Barrie Kosky’s K. Photo © Jörg Brüggemann

Kosky’s K, meanwhile, reimagines Franz Kafka’s The Trial as a collision of theatre, dance, song and vaudeville. Performed by actors from Berlin’s Berliner Ensemble and accompanied by a live band, the production follows Josef K as he becomes trapped in an absurd and terrifying system of bureaucratic power.

The production draws on Kafka’s engagement with Yiddish theatre and his Jewish heritage, with German actor Kathrin Wehlisch taking the title role. K will be presented at Her Majesty’s Theatre from 4 to 7 March.

Kosky has a similarly strong Adelaide Festival history, having directed Saul (2017), The Magic Flute (2019), The Golden Cockerel (2022) and The Threepenny Opera (2024). K marks his first theatre production in Australia since The Tell-Tale Heart in 2010.

Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Matthew Lutton said the two productions represented “audacious, spectacular events” and described Castellucci and Kosky as directors whose work is “wildly imaginative and impossible to forget”.

The full Adelaide Festival program will be announced on 27 October.