The Bowie Show

4

This was my first visit to the Golder’s Green Hippodrome, a hulking venue the size of the Coliseum, and originally built as a music hall. It has seen better days, but its faded, knocked-about grandeur still provides an appropriately grandiose setting for the first iteration of a Bowie retrospect. Whatever else might be said of Beckenham’s greatest son, his work needs scale and amplitude in which to shine and shimmer. As the man himself said, ‘People don’t want a recital; they want a show. This is not a radio but a colour TV.’

And this is certainly what we get…

With twenty seven numbers spread out over the two halves of the evening, The Bowie Show is nothing if not generous. All the favourite songs are there, together with many less well known, and presented in broadly chronological order, through all his career phases, from ‘Space Oddity’ to ‘Lazarus’. A simple split-level stage is flanked by the members of the band, a virtuosic group of players, often playing more than one instrument, and with saxophonist, Damon Oliver, a standout soloist. The stage is framed with side-panels and a backdrop onto which complex video montages are projected, so that each number is in a way a separate, carefully styled pop video into which three vocalists are inserted together with a backing-group of dancers.

The three singers at the heart of the action are all excellent in contrasted ways. This is about as far from being a tame tribute act as can be. Sian Crowe, Greg Oliver and Elliot Rose manage to evoke Bowie without imitating him, and the different timbres and registers provide variety and different shades of energy across the evening. Given that each song is a concentrated story as much as a musical rendition, they are all required to act to a high level too and fully engage with the physical energy of the choreography. As a result every number is a visual feast, whether topgraphical or psychedelic, as much as a sonic one.

Crucial to the success of the whole is the highly oriignal choreography by Sophie Quay and the inventive virtuosity of the costumes designed by Cathy Kelly and Rebecca Martin. Just as with the vocalists, the stylistic choices are indebted to Bowie and the Swaggering Seventies, but with a wholly modern vibe. Overall style coordinator Sadie Yukon has appreciated that the best way to represent and depict the scale and range of shape shifting across Bowie’s career is to go for quirky, period inspirations that are never strict copies but creative reactions to Bowie’s original inspirations. Nowhere is this better shown than in ‘Sound and Vision’, just after the interval, where orange-suited dancers with red TV-screen heads summon up the techno-alternative quirkiness of the era. In many of the numbers there was actually so much going on that I would have appreciated a replay for all the varied creative input to fully register.

With so many individually distinguished reworkings of celebrated songs, I can only indicate here a few personal favourites. Much of the first half was given over the glam rock phase of Bowie’s career and with such well known material it was impressive that new ways of showcasing them were found.  In ‘Jean Jeanie’, dancer Jordan Boury produced some astonishing moves, full of euphoric gender-bending authority. Amazing indeed what can be done in platform shoes…..’Life on Mars’,  as always, was a multi-layered highlight; ‘Cracked Actor’ was a fully conceived mischievous study in narcissim; and, perhaps best of all, ‘Wild is the Wind’, last on before the interval, was an example of when everything came together perfectly in musical performance and spectacular, carefully curated special effects.

Not everything works – sometimes the sheer blizzard of video overlays, stage action and flashing lighting schemes is overwhelming, and you need to just shut your eyes and let the music wash over you. And at points the sound balance of voices to band is too heavily weighted towards the latter, something that often happens in a first performance in a venue. But, all in all, this is an astonishing achievement of technique and sensual bombardment that you can only think Bowie would have loved. As the show ends, as it should, with the cumulative power of ‘Heroes’, you were left feeling grateful once more for the abundance of his legacy, and the lavish but calculated way in which it has been given a new showcase.

 

Hippodrome, Golder’s Green

Director: Simon Gwilliam

Musical Director: Alex Turney

Cast includes: Sian Crowe, Greg Oliver & Elliot Rose

24 January 2025 and touring

2 hrs with interval