Show: An Evening Without Kate Bush
Event: Liverpool Theatre Festival 2021
Location: Bombed Out Church, Liverpool
Date: Monday September 6 2021
Time: 19.30
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Age Rating: 12+
Performer: Sarah-Louise Young
Production Company: John Mackay
An Evening Without Kate Bush at Liverpool‘s Bombed Out Church is the eighth Liverpool Theatre Festival show this Summer. So, let’s take a look at this off-beat performance!
An Evening Without Kate Bush Background
This show features a truly chaotic cabaret cult, and it’s all the better for it! We enter a Strange Phenomena while howling with The Hounds Of Love and dancing with Wuthering Heights. Now, Kate Bush is not there, but you are. Indeed, this sees Sarah-Louise Young team up with theatremaker Russell Lucas to look back at Kate’s music and mythology. With a career spanning forty years, Kate always finds new ways to surprise fans and confound critics. And through her journey, Kate’s fanbase remains as loyal as ever. So, come and join us as we celebrate Kate Bush through a truly unique and memorable production.
Analysis
Let me start by saying I’m not a Kate Bush Fan, however my partner Bernard is. The tribute artist Sarah-Louise Young, walked onto the stage wearing a black leotard and tights, with a black full length skirt from her waist, she also wore what is best described as a Black Ostrich feathers headpiece and was covered with a black veil with which she could hold her arm high above her head and the veil still reached the floor.
Sarah-Louise Young told us “This show is not about her, it’s about you!” Also “She will return she always does!”
The entire show was full of energy with lots of audience participation. The songs included ‘Under the Ivy’, ‘Ba Bushka’, ‘Running up that Hill’, ‘Army Dreamers’, ‘King of the Mountain’, ‘The Man with the Child in His Eyes’, ‘Cloudbusting’ and, of course, ‘Wuthering Heights’.
This performance was powerful, moving, energetic yet also understated at times, with a plain stage set, then an excellent use of props. The props included; an apron & rubber gloves, blinking hand held eyeballs, pink mop head/wig, original curly brown hair wig that once belonged to “Jackie”, the first Kate Bush Tribute Act (now retired), a snowflake headpiece, fluffy fur with ears (a lion’s mane) and a white wedding dress.
At one point she got a couple in the audience to slow dance as she sang. We put the lights on our phones and helped light up the now dark Bombed out church. For another song she invited two women from the audience up onto the stage as her backing singers. They and the audience loved it.
She told us the story of Kates life, how she wrote The Man with the Child in His Eyes when she was only 14 years old. ‘Army Dreamers’ is about the troubles in Ireland and specifically the I.R.A. Kate Bush trained with, the mime superstar Lindsay Kemp. Even explaining how for many years we, the English, had been pronouncing her song Ba Bushka wrong! The word means Grandmother or old woman in Russian.
Overall, An Evening Without Kate Bush was energetic, informative, joyful, moving, quintessentially Kate, understood, and strongly recommended to watch should the show return to the North West in the next few months or years.
Summary
Having started the evening knowing very little about Kate Bush, I can definitely say I left as a convert to The Fish People (The name for Kate Bush fans).
The artist Sarah-Louise Young is very talented and also has another tribute show she does around Christmas time and hope to bring it to next year’s L.T.F. Watch this space as I don’t want to spoil the surprise…!
Notes
Target Audience: 12 years and over Kate Bush fans
Content: No content likely to offend above the age rating
Recommendation?: Yes
Overall Rating: 9/10
Liverpool Theatre Festival continues at the Bombed Out Church until Sunday September 12 2021. So, to purchase tickets for any of those shows, click here.
For more Liverpool Theatre Festival articles, click here.
Did you see An Evening Without Kate Bush? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
