A bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush
Last night – upon a last-minute whim and with not a little anticipatory excitement – my wife and I went to the small-stage Minerva at the Chichester Festival Theatre for the last performance of three at the venue given by Sarah-Louise Young of her one-woman show conceived with Russell Lucas – An Evening Without Kate Bush.
Before I come to my review I apologise to any Rusters who might not be remotely interested in the catalogue of bizarre circumstances that accompanied our expedition.
Having decided on Thursday to see if I could buy tickets for last night’s performance online from the Theatre’s website, there was always going to be a fighting chance that I would make a Horlicks of the process. As proved to be the case.
I somehow managed to place three tickets in my “shopping basket” instead of the two I actually wanted and then – in “coming out” of the website in order to go back in again and begin a fresh attempt – I somehow then managed to buy two tickets for the wrong night (Thursday), a fact I only discovered last night at about 70 minutes before “curtain up” when printing off the E-tickets before travelling to the show.
A frantic call to the box office followed – including an excruciating wait of ten minutes whilst the staffer on the line sought to discover whether I could be given tickets for last night in these circumstances – before we set off.
At the Festival Theatre – famished after a day of Christmas shopping in Portsmouth – we queued to buy sandwiches and a drink at a café/bar and then sat at a small table chatting to a couple who had driven from Petersfield and who, like us, had not only come on the wrong night, but – ironically in their case – also the wrong show!
At about 7.20pm an announcement was made that the show was beginning in 10 minutes and please could everyone now take their seats.
This puzzled me somewhat as I was under the impression that our show was due to commence at 7.45pm, but anyway we dutifully made our way up the nearby stairs into the auditorium, where a staffer directed us to the opposite side of the theatre.
Speaking to a second staffer there, we were then advised we were in the wrong theatre – the Kate Bush evening was taking place in the Minerva and (as I had thought, at least I got that correct!) was indeed not due to begin until 7.45pm.
Anyway, to my review.
Now in my eighth decade and primarily steeped in rock music and blues, I have to admit that Kate Bush features in my memory and estimation as a precocious young singer-songwriter who was “discovered” in her early teens by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour who recommended her to his record label EMI.
She then instantly hit mega-stardom at the age of 19 with the release of her first album The Kick Inside in 1978, from which her first single (Wuthering Heights) topped the singles charts for four weeks and made her the first-ever female artiste to achieve a number one with a self-penned song.
A stellar career followed featuring classic ditties such as The Man With the Child In His Eyes, Babooshka, Running Up That Hill and Don’t Give Up (a duet with Peter Gabriel), but for me – from about the mid-1990s – she rather disappeared off the radar until she made a surprise comeback in 2014 with a one-off UK national tour at the age of fifty-six.
To put no finer point upon it, in my memory bank Kate Bush has always retained a deserved place as a major British pop star with a brief (well, fifteen year) career: a stunningly-beautiful and highly-talented but kooky young girl (“mad as a box of frogs” might be an apt description) who will forever remain in her early to mid-twenties, composing performing brilliant but slightly “girly” songs and famed for issuing a series of innovative and “off the wall” videos to promote them.
See here for a link to the video for Cloudbusting, my all-time favourite of her songs, which features Donald Sutherland playing the part of her father – courtesy of – YOUTUBE
Last night’s An Evening Without Kate Bush performed by the 46 year-old Sarah-Louise Young turned out to be a rewarding and provoking show.
Not only did Young look and sound distinctly like Bush at the height of her (early) career when performing many of her best-known songs, she did so with no assistance beyond the equivalent of a wicker basketful of different costumes/scarves, a wireless microphone secured in her hair, an excellent sound system and well-created lighting delivered by her production crew set high at the back of the 300-seater Minerva theatre.
Her performance was charismatic, witty and informative. She also encouraged audience participation and frequently “stepped out of the show” to chat or reminisce about her love of Kate Bush the creative artiste and performer and offer glimpses of her own personal life and its relationship with Bush’s music.
In short, last night’s performance was a minor “tour de force” and – although I could not claim to be a fanatical Kate Bush fan – I greatly enjoyed my evening at the theatre.
Perhaps inevitably, the only “downer” of the evening for me came in appreciating the average age of the audience seemed to be north of 60.
The observation is an oldie’s “thing” and a reflection upon the passage of time.
When you think about it, anyone who was an impressionable youngster and loved Kate Bush’s music in the period of her zenith (1978 to 1990?) would probably have been between the ages of 15 and 27 at the time … and therefore at least 58 today.
As I mentioned earlier – in my mind’s eye, Kate Bush will only ever be about 25 years of age – talented, young, slim and devastatingly attractive.
From which perspective it’s hard – and indeed perhaps cruel to all of us – to have to contemplate, let alone accept, that she’ll be celebrating this Christmas as a 63 year old!
