Review: THE PRINCESS BRIDE IN CONCERT – ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL 2024 at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 28th September 2024.

Hosted by Steven Gates, The Princess Bride in Concert combines the 1987 film, shown on an enormous screen, with Mark Knopfler’s soundtrack orchestrated and played live by the Southern Cross Symphony Orchestra, featuring the Artistic Director of the Guitar Festival, Slava Grigoryan. The Southern Cross Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the highly experienced and musically diverse, Jessica Gethin, from Western Australia, bills itself as Australia's leading Theatre, Concert, and Special Event Symphony Orchestra. The original score was recorded by only two people, Knopfler and Guy Fletcher, overlaying multiple acoustic instruments and synthesisers. To hear it orchestrated for 67 musicians is a remarkable experience, and the contrast between passages of the orchestra in full flight, and gentle guitar sections creates the moods of the many scenes in the film, from romantic encounters, to exciting chases, and to swashbuckling sword fights.

Steven Gates, perhaps better known as Gatesy, a member of the comedy musical trio, Tripod, introduced the event with a song that he wrote about his own relationship with this cult film, generating plenty of laughter..

William Goldman adapted his 1973 novel about Westley, a farmhand who loves Buttercup, and who goes off to seek his fortune. He is thought to be dead, killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Buttercup, believing this to be true, reluctantly accepts that she has been chosen by the dastardly Prince Humperdink, as is his royal right, to be his bride. He has an ulterior motive.

The Dread Pirate Roberts arrives, aiming to rescue Princess Buttercup, from the enforced marriage. Along the way, he encounters Vizzini and his henchmen, Inigo Montoya, a master swordsman, and Fezzik, a giant from Greenland, who have been engaged by Humperdink to kidnap Buttercup and kill her to start a war with the neighbouring kingdom; Guilder. He disposes of Vissini, and Inigo Montoya and Fezzik eventually join him in his quest, after he reveals himself as Westley. To maintain the style of the book, the film employs the device of a grandfather reading the tale to his sick grandson.

The important thing here, however, is not the film which, I suspect, was what primarily appealed to and took the focus of the majority of the audience, who cheered and applauded at times, and spoke along to iconic bits of dialogue. This was all about the wonderful music played by the very fine orchestra, and Slava Grigoryan, almost entirely hidden in the shadows below the screen. Perhaps, as a classically trained musician, I gained more from the experience than many, taking in the effectiveness and inventiveness of the orchestration, the use of the different sections of the orchestra to convey the many moods, and the high quality of the musicianship. Nevertheless, whatever the individual members took from the performance, universally they loved it, and the tumultuous applause demonstrated that.

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