Kate Bush cabaret celebration is a delight on the Chichester stage

An Evening Without Kate Bush, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, December 1-3
An Evening Without Kate Bush Photo by Steve UllathorneAn Evening Without Kate Bush Photo by Steve Ullathorne
An Evening Without Kate Bush Photo by Steve Ullathorne

You will start off wondering where on earth it is going. Once you realise it absolutely doesn’t have to go anywhere, you will love it.

Any celebration of Kate Bush simply has to be eccentric, and this is certainly that – but also endearing, hugely skilled, at times hilarious and great good fun.

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Appropriately billed as a “chaotic cabaret cult”, An Evening Without Kate Bush is a one-woman show from Sarah-Louise Young, a superb singer who gets uncannily close to Kate.

But she is also a fine in-the-moment performer constantly trying to engage the audience, quick wittedly drawing us into Kate’s strange world and her own even more bonkers one.

There’s a kind of randomness as she goes from one song to the next, giving each one a kind of context as she explores just what it is about Bush that inspires such a devoted following.

It’s great that she wants to know why we are there – and lovely that she bounds out of the theatre at the end to speak to us all as we leave.

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The songs are, of course, fabulous. And it is great to hear them again. But this does so much more than a mere tribute artist might do. This is packed with personality and invention; it’s baffling but it’s charming; it’s got depth, but it’s also funny; it’s clever but it’s also hugely likeable.