Kylie Minogue

A run of bad luck seems to have plagued the Manchester leg of Kylie’s Showgirl - Homecoming Tour, but ever the professional, Ms Minogue seems to live by that old performer’s motto: The Show Must Go On.

With the rescheduling of three of her MEN Arena shows due to flu, it was a relief to find Thursday’s show was going ahead as scheduled, albeit delayed to allow audience members time to arrive after high winds turned the Manchester road & public transport systems into a disaster zone.

Going to see Kylie perform is more theatre than concert with different themes for each segment of the show. With eight costume changes for the star and her dancers, trap doors, lasers, and parts of the catwalk stage rising and spinning on demand, sometimes the music becomes secondary to the experience. I imagine for many of the adoring crowd, just seeing Kylie standing silently on the stage waving and smiling at them in her sequins and feathers would have been enough to make them happy.

	"This is pure Pop music and as its princess, Kylie has always summed up what this genre is about – style over substance."

In saying that, the aural experience was by no means second rate. Perhaps the good acoustics at the Arena helped, but even with her cold (which meant occasionally you could see her coughing discreetly between numbers) Kylie’s voice sounded even stronger than it had at her first Wembley Show on New Years Eve.

Many songs were not sung in their entirety but as part of a medley or as a verse within another tune, as was the case with the chorus of ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’. With a back catalogue of material stretching over her twenty year career to choose from, this meant that a lot of the big singles were at least referenced, though some of the song choices did seem a little off the mark. The inclusion of several lesser known tracks and slower, more serious numbers definitely didn’t get as positive an audience reaction as classic pop material such as ‘Shocked By The Power’, ‘I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ and ‘Better The Devil You Know’ – songs that seem to have aged surprisingly well and that most people, even if they’re too cool to admit it, I think secretly enjoy.

Of course, the inclusion of new material, such as ‘White Diamond’, that Kylie informed the crowd ‘Was written with The Scissor Sisters, who we love’ and the inclusion into the set of relatively unsuccessful singles like ‘Chocolate’ from her last LP ‘Body Language’, means that she is yet to fall into the trap of becoming purely a nostalgia act.

Unlike Madonna, Ms Minogue has never really been a fantastic dancer but that didn’t stop a nice remix of ‘Vogue’ being included in the show, as well as an impressive solo version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ sung from the heights of a giant half moon suspended above the stage. A lot of Pop Culture references appeared during the performance too. The chorus of one hit wonder Yazz’s ‘The Only Way is Up’ began a set of classics from Kylie’s 80’s period and Boy George’s influence was evident in the costume he designed for the encore. The last Act of the show saw Minogue dressed as a Dr Who inspired Space Vixen, complete with Tardis sound effects under the music and ‘The Locomotion’ was performed in a cheeky burlesque style that worked so much better than the ‘sexy’ version she has tried on past tours.

I think everybody has seen Photographs of Kylie in her Showgirl outfit or her Dolce & Gabanna leopard print catsuit, since this tour marks her triumphant return from Breast Cancer. This is pure Pop music and as its princess, Kylie has always summed up what this genre is about – style over substance. Having seen her perform live several years ago and on that occasion being quite under whelmed by the experience, I have to admit I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this concert. Although the big ‘C’ is never referred to, it seems the experience may have added an element of determination to her ‘nice’ personality and she is a better performer for it.

Taking time after the encore to fuss over Mancunian dancer Terry Kvasnik and stopping the performance to sign a poster reading ‘Better not kiss me, I’ve got a cold’, the superstar seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself. When Kylie stood at the front of the stage in the spotlight, basking in the applause of the crowd and exclaiming ‘This is my Dream’, you really REALLY believed it.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.