An Evening Without Kate Bush

Last night I took myself to the Melbourne premiere of the cabaret tribute show An Evening Without Kate Bush. Part of the Midsumma festival, the show is co-created by Russell Lucas and Sarah-Louise Young. The production has had three sold-out, critically acclaimed runs at Edinburgh Fringe, two Soho Theatre seasons and 2020-2023 UK tours, and has performed at prominent festivals around Australia. 

Performed by Sarah-Louise Young, who has an exceptional voice and sounds a lot like Kate Bush, it’s based on years of Bush-related research. I don’t know much about Kate Bush other than a few of her songs, and I’ve always been interested to learn more about her, which is what drew me to the show. I feel this was how it was marketed, with the blurb reading “An Evening Without Kate Bush pays glorious tribute to the music, fans, and mythology of one of the most influential voices in pop culture. From releasing Wuthering Heights aged just 19 to selling out the Hammersmith Apollo nearly 40 years later, Bush has always surprised and confounded her critics.”

Sarah-Louise Young tells us at the start that this show is for everyone, from the die-hard fans to the ones who came “just to enjoy the air-conditioning”. I was expecting a trajectory of Kate, how she rose to power, her feminism. I wanted to feel her empowerment, the strength that she is idolised for. Instead, the show was about Sarah-Louise Young’s obsession with Kate Bush, portrayed in a comedic, tongue-and cheek style. 

With plenty of funny audience interaction and some visually pleasing clothing props, there were some entertaining moments in this show, however unfortunately overall I felt uninspired and let down, as I didn’t learn about Kate. Perhaps if I were a Kate Bush die-hard fan I would have enjoyed this show more. I took my daughter with me however, and she enjoyed the show and found it entertaining. I, on the other hand, left quite annoyed. This is yet another example of a show, where there has been a reliance on a name like Kate Bush to draw people to the show, and then the show is quite mediocre. This was the case with another show I saw for Midsumma at the Arts Centre, “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen”, which was marketed as “From the Producers of Baby Reindeer”. As the creator of theatre who finds it impossible to find venue support in Melbourne like so many other artists, I kept thinking through the whole show “surely there is a stronger local show that could have been programmed here”. 

Koraly Dimitriadis

Photographer: Shay Rowan

Koraly Dimitriadis is a Cypriot-Australian bestselling poet, writer and performer and the author of Love and F—k Poems, Just Give Me The Pills, She’s Not Normal and the short story collection The Mother Must Die. Her theatre show “I say the wrong things all the time” premiered at La Mama. She is nearing completion of her new theatre work “Why isn’t she normal?” www.koralydimitriadis.com