Burrowed in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, a circular wooden structure has appeared, designed to accommodate 110 audience members. The building, dubbed the “Wandering Hall of Possibility,” is the theatre and set for A Concise Compendium of Wonder, the final production from Adelaide’s Slingsby Theatre Company.
The trilogy of shows adapts fairytales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde, spanning settings from medieval Europe to a moon colony in the year 3099. Each performance can be experienced as a standalone piece, or as a connected triptych, with the theatre itself transforming between each act, all performed by the same three actors.
Slingsby, known for its work aimed at young audiences and families, has consistently sought to create stories that resonate with both children and adults, according to artistic director Andy Packer. “Stories that speak to the future adult in the eight-year-old, and… the child that still exists in the 80-year-old,” he said, as reported by Glam Adelaide.
The company’s productions have long been characterized by immersive theatrical spaces and reinterpretations of classic tales, often grappling with complex themes. Previous Slingsby productions, such as Emil and the Detectives, were staged in unconventional locations like an abandoned theme park, while Man Covets Bird featured a theatre floor covered in real grass. These productions, while infused with magic, also acknowledge darker themes like death, loss, and loneliness, presenting challenging situations for young characters to navigate.
Despite a history of successful tours across Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America, A Concise Compendium of Wonder will be Slingsby’s last. Packer stated the company is “investing everything we had in the bank” in this final project. Following its premiere season in Adelaide, the trilogy will travel to Whyalla on the Eyre Peninsula for a three-week run before concluding its tour.
The decision to close the company stems from ongoing challenges in securing consistent funding. While Slingsby receives state funding, it has not held federal multi-year funding since 2016, forcing it to rely on “incredibly entrepreneurial” efforts to remain sustainable, according to Packer. A recent rejection for multi-year funding from Creative Australia prompted a reassessment of the company’s future. “We realised we’d come to the end of that,” Packer explained in an interview with InDaily.
Packer advocates for increased government arts funding but also believes artists must critically evaluate the sustainability of their work. He questioned whether artists are caught in a cycle of constant fundraising and production, asking, “Am I just in a hamster wheel here?” He added that without sufficient financial stability, Slingsby would be unable to continue taking the creative risks that define its work.
For this final trilogy, Slingsby departed from its usual practice of collaborating with playwrights, instead commissioning short stories from Australian authors Ceridwen Dovey, Ursula Dubosarsky, and Jennifer Mills. These authors adapted existing fairytales, incorporating contemporary concerns about nature and climate change – themes that emerged from Slingsby’s workshops with schoolchildren, where children frequently expressed “climate anxiety” or “a sense of impending doom for the future.”
Mills’s The Childhood of the World follows two children displaced by famine, while Dubosarsky’s The Giant’s Garden centers on children banished from a beloved garden. Dovey’s The Tree of Light features a 12-year-old elder of “the Moonfolk” sharing a story before the moon’s last tree. Despite exploring these hard themes, Packer emphasized the importance of ending each work on a hopeful note. “I want to take the audience into the darkness, but I don’t want to leave them there,” he said. “I want to lead the audience back to a sense of hope – hope for themselves and hope for the people that they live amongst and around.”
Slingsby is committed to minimizing the environmental impact of its final tour, transporting the set exclusively by land or sea. The “Wandering Hall of Possibility” itself will be repurposed after the tour concludes, either by other companies or festivals, before its materials are recycled.
Packer, who has served as Slingsby’s artistic director since 2007, acknowledged a sense of sadness about the company’s closure. “It didn’t have to be this way but that’s where we’re at and I’m really proud of the decision that we’ve made,” he said. “That allows us to not be too worried about the future but instead be extremely focused on what’s happening right here and right now.”
