An Evening Without Kate Bush review: ‘A magnificent, mesmerising and funny celebration’

Words: Simon Button; Images: Steve Ullathorne

When Kate Bush made her triumphant return to the concert stage in 2014, she notched up a record-breaking 22 nights at the Hammersmith Apollo. Paying homage to her idol in An Evening Without Kate Bush at the Soho Theatre, Sarah-Louise Young falls just short of that milestone with a tally of 18 shows.

And what a show An Evening Without is. Scaling the wuthering heights of Kate’s remarkable career, it’s far from being one of those pub singalongs with someone who looks a bit like George Michael or Robbie Williams and sounds sort-of like them if you factor in the din of hen party banter and clunking wine glasses.

Dressed in form-fitting leotards and floaty frocks, our hostess looks a lot like Bush and, tackling the tricky likes of ‘Cloudbusting’ and ‘James and the Cold Gun’, does a fair job of nailing her many vocal idiosyncrasies. Her’s is not an impersonation as such, more an approximation of Kate’s weird and wonderful otherness.

Running up the hill of the singer’s unique artistry, the show is also an exploration of what she means to her fans. Sarah-Louise is clearly one of them and she brings the audience in – asking for requests (I asked for ‘Army Dreamers’ and got it) and hauling volunteers on stage to act as backing singers or ‘Don’t Give Up’ dancers.

I first saw her when she performed it for one night only in the tiny crypt theatre at the London Museum of Comedy back in 2019 before taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe, where she wowed ticket-buyers as well as them heavy people known as the critics.

Plans to bring it back to the capital were curtailed by COVID but Sarah-Louise now has a residency in the Soho Theatre’s intimate downstairs auditorium, allowing her to wander through the cabaret-style tables and get up close and personal with an audience who are as much a part of the performance as the lady herself.

Highlights included a crash course in Kate’s signature dance moves, ‘Rubberband Girl’ as a partial singalong, ‘Babushka’ done in Russian and a stirring ‘Running Up That Hill’.

Then she turned the microphone round at the start of ‘Wuthering Heights’ to invite the crowd to take over, capping off a magnificent, mesmerising, funny and heartfelt celebration of this woman’s work. Kate Bush, I’m sure, would be thrilled.

Rating: 5/5

An Evening Without Kate Bush is at the Soho Theatre, London, until 26 February. For great deals on tickets and shows click here.