Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy have had a dream start to their tenure as Joint Artistic Directors of the Adelaide Festival with their debut programme taking more than $4.08 million at the box office, representing a 44 percent increase on last year. The 2017 takings were the highest in the Festival’s 57-year history, matching a plethora of rave reviews and high levels of audience excitement.

^{The Secret River at Anstey Hill Quarry. Photograph © Shane Reid}

The Festival, which closed on Sunday, got off to a powerful start with a revival of Armfield’s award-winning production of The Secret River. The original Sydney Theatre Company production, co-produced here with the State Theatre Company of South Australia, was given “a visually rich and intensely moving production” at Anstey Hill Quarry in Tea Tree Gully wrote Limelight editor Clive Paget, who believed that staging the play in the Australian landscape took it to a new level.

Barrie Kosky’s inspired Glyndebourne production of Saul, which received a five-star review in Limelight, and the devastatingly brilliant dance-theatre work Bettrofenheit from Jonathon Young’s Electric Company Theatre and Crystal Pite’s company Kidd Pivot,...