Putting the show back in the business
By Corinna Tomrley
Whether dressed in royal blue or baby pink ostrich feathers, you’ve got to hand it to Kylie as when it comes to her ‘Showgirl’ tour she does what it says on the tin. This is proper glamour show business, right rollicking entertainment hitting to the heart of her core fan base - the pounds as pink as those feathers and fellow camp travellers. Of course, considering this last year for her it is also something of a major celebration. Having had to interrupt the leg of the tour in her homeland because a routine insurance medical revealed she had cancer, now resuming in remission she must feel like those corsets and headdresses are a fitting fiesta to a fighting spirit.
Not only do Kylie and Kylie’s fans need this shindig but live pop performance has been missing Kylie and her pixie flamboyance; pop concerts have been getting a little dull over the years. Once upon a time the stars tried to outdo each other and themselves in spectacle. But Britney succumbed to motherhood and wifely duties and Madonna got all cult-head and earnest: the show has been somehow lost from the business.
Madonna laid the ground work for the concert as theatrical performance, re-jigging song styles and pulling bits and pieces in from other cultural spheres, Kylie came after with the glitter, the glamour and the sequins to give proceedings a good old-fashioned camp T&A twist. The stage is somewhere she’s often made quite an impression, whether it was reading the lyrics to her first hit ’I Should be so Lucky’ at a Royal Albert Hall poetry festival or opening the Sydney Olympics appearing on a giant flip-flop (from show business, to shoe business! I apologise…). This pocket-sized Aussie girl’s tongue is in her cheek and she knows how to have a good old time. At the 2000 Olympics she performed ‘Dancing Queen’ because she knows her disco legacy and she knows it’s mainly surface and shine and about having a blast right now - the visceral thrill of the moment. That’s what a show should be like.
Which is more than can be said for the once-queen of the stadium, Dame Madge - what has happened? I couldn’t help but wonder while watching Madonna’s last two efforts, ‘Reinvention’ and ‘Confessions’, why it had to all be so dark and bleak. Viewing the section where we are informed how many children in Africa have just succumbed to AIDS (like one of those awful charity ads you see in the afternoon while waiting for the crappy TV movie to come back on), my co-‘Confessions’ watcher turned to me and said, ‘when will the phone line donation number pop up?’ And we both wondered, ‘Where’d the fun go, Madge?’
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I feel there is no place for preaching in pop. I stand by Streisand’s statement that The Artist is a Citizen and has every right to be political and have an opinion. Indeed, they have the Big Soap Box; why not have a shout? But there should be a balance in something that is in fact an entertainment event. If one has shelled out what is usually a really large amount of money to watch you, either as a slight dot on the horizon or more usually, end up watching you on the big tellies provided aside the stage, one wants to actually be entertained not made to feel depressed with the world. One wants to feel joy and elation, not have it sucked out of one’s very party-spirit. We want some colour, some sparkle - a show! Which is where Kylie comes in.
The Minogue doesn’t feel the need to pontificate on our pathetic planet and all its perils. She gets on with it, dresses as some kind of weird tiger, sticks on a dodgy wig and gold dress in what’s probably an homage to an eighties idea of futuristic or goes all Vegas on our arses and has some blooming F. U. N.
Doll-sized Kylie may not be the energetic performer of the Ciccone or Spears variety; she has always tended to strut, pose or stand still and now things have to be further paced because of her recovery but it‘s not about acrobatics. Kylie knows how to infuse the proceedings with her chutzpah and her joyous jamboree. Britney and Madonna are trained dancers who sing. The pop-diva Minogue possesses neither the greatest voice or the ability to gymnastically leap about but she is the consummate showgirl who knows how to sell some rollicking good tunes. Inspired by Broadway, Hollywood musicals, burlesque and - god bless her - Bette Midler, Kylie’s live shows cherry-pick from the cream of the campy crop. She has a gay old time and takes her audience along for the glitter-ball ride.
So this return is a celebration of the highest order; she likened chemo to surviving an atomic bomb so the girl has something to get dressed up for, a reason to shake some sequined bootie. Kylie’s shows are something worth shelling out for because you know what you will get: some show with your business. And it must be a lot cheaper than flying to Vegas.
Showgirl: The Greatest Hits World Tour -
-2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th January - Wembley Stadium, London
12th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th January - MEN arena, Manchester