There is something very reassuring about watching a solo performer who is so completely comfortable in their natural environment – on the stage – that as audience members you can just relax and let them take you with them on whatever fanciful flight they choose. Sarah Louise Young is such a performer, and An Evening Without Kate Bush, co-devised with director Russell Lucas, is such a show.
The first thing to note is that the title gives you all the information you need. Kate Bush is indeed not present, and nor is someone offering a simple impersonation or the famously visibility-averse English superstar. Young doesn’t attempt to recreate the extraordinary banshee-like vocals that first brought Bush to the world’s attention back in 1978 and were utilised to such breathtaking effect on groundbreaking tracks like ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Wow’. Nor does she merely replicate Bush at her most deliriously, gloriously bonkers – the donkey heehaws on ‘Get Out of My House’ or the literal bird sounds of ‘Aerial Tal’, for example.
Instead Young proves herself to be a wonderfully talented performer and gifted singer in her own right, performing a barrage of Bush’s greatest hits in a voice that is distinctly her own, but is often close to the original in timbre, phrasing and intent.
But this is also a performance from a Fish Person, or super fan, someone who has known and loved the work of one of the UK’s greatest living national treasures from childhood. She knows her stuff and there are in-jokes and subtle references peppered throughout the show. Here’s the thing though. Young is acutely conscious that not everyone in the audience may be on quite the same page, and she is brilliantly adept at bringing everyone along with her – with her vibrant humour, formidable energy, and warm and embracing approach to audience engagement.
There is plenty of banter between songs, along with costume changes, wildly theatrical dance moves (this is Kate Bush we’re talking about after all) and plenty of innovation in her treatment of the material and the storytelling.
Those stories include reminiscences of her own history and encounters along her Bush journey of discovery – meeting previous tribute acts and performing a Bush classic to a school assembly among them. It may have been diverting to have even more of this. Intertwining the performer’s own experiences with that of the luminary who is the subject of the show takes the production out of mere tribute act territory and into something even more dynamic and, potentially, profound. One of the greatest examples of this is David Benson’s Think No Evil of Us – My Life With Kenneth Williams, where the actor showed off his brilliant mimicry of the Carry On, Round the Horne and Just a Minute stalwart, but also used it to explore and unveil his own sometimes traumatic history.
Perhaps Young doesn’t have anything quite so dramatic in her past to mine for theatrical effect, but the moments where she reveals more of what is behind the wigs/hats/mop heads (!) do take the production in intriguing directions. There’s nothing like a touch of vulnerability to endear a performer to an audience – as long as we still feel safe, of course.
But that’s merely a suggestion to expand the concept. What Young does have to offer certainly stands on its own. There’s an excellent range of material – stretching from the heart-wrenching gentle strains of ‘Dream of Sheep’, right through to where it all began, with Young draped in Cathy Earnshaw’s white wedding dress performing the moves with which wutherers worldwide are so familiar, but handing most of the heavy lifting of the song over to the audience. And if you can’t sing along to ‘Wuthering Heights’, what can you do?
A particular highlight has to be the revelation about the correct way to pronounce ‘Babooshka’ – and the performance that follows, bringing to mind Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft’s equally hilarious Polish version of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ all those years ago.
Read: Theatre review: Wuthering Heights, Roslyn Packer Theatre
Solo cabaret performers who can own the stage for an entire show full of songs and stories are such a joy. Reuben Kaye can do it. And clearly Sarah-Louise Young can too.
It’s a very short run for this midsumma festival show, but it is followed with a couple of nights in Sydney, a longer stint at Adelaide Fringe, a one-off in Parramatta and another in Christchurch New Zealand, with more dates to be announced.
If you can make any of those, it is highly recommended that you do. It’s truly fabulous.
An Evening Without Kate Bush is at Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne as part of midsumma festival until 8 February, before touring.
