The financially-strapped Adelaise Festival has thrown itself on the mercy of the state government asking “for debts of about $1.2 million to be forgiven, and seeking additional cash, which it would match with corporate investment or other festival sponsorship. The total budget is likely to be close to $5 million, short of the $8 million spent by Peter Sellars last year. Without it, [the festival says] it will be impossible to provide the level of programming needed to shore up the festival’s reputation – tarnished by community dismay at Sellars’s determinedly radical event.”