Enmore Theatre, September 6
A David Bowie tribute show by anyone else would make me wince. Singer/actor/writer/director John Cameron Mitchell’s song cycle specifically investigates Bowie’s darker side, which became so dominant with the Blackstar material, written when he knew he was dying.
Mitchell’s bond with Bowie runs deeper than admiration. Bowie invested in Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and asked Mitchell if he’d make the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars into a musical. Not interested in a jukebox show, and too shy to ask Bowie if he could tamper with the lyrics, Mitchell declined the offer, which he said was his one regret in life.
The Bowie estate should pursue the idea. Mitchell has a singular affinity for the work. His voice is not dissimilar, and he knows how to amplify the songs’ inherent drama without distorting them. Just as JoJo A. Franjoine’s astonishing lighting illuminated the stage, so Mitchell illuminated such murky recesses in Bowie’s catalogue as 1969’s Conversation Piece, as well as offering fresh perspectives on well-known songs by contextualising them with companion works about alienation, despair and destruction.
It was ideal that this generous two-act show was at the Enmore, a venue steeped in rock and with scant ties to musical theatre, because this was a full-blooded rock concert. The charismatic Mitchell and guests might have an innate flair for theatricality, but underpinning it all was a bruising band led by US musical director Matthew Katz-Bohen on keyboards, with locals Angus Leslie (guitar), Josh Ahearn (bass) and Chris Allison (drums).
You knew they meant business when they opened with the apocalyptic Station to Station, as Bowie himself did at his 1978 Sydney show. Despite being abbreviated, this version still blistered the room with the requisite menace. Meow Meow came on to rip Five Years apart, even if some of the gloom was lost to glitter, and Amber Martin, often present adding backing vocals, iced a monstrously funky version of Fame with a soprano extension that tried to shatter my glasses.
Young Oz singer Jude York offered a slightly twee Life on Mars, but when he returned, his Wild Is the Wind was a highlight amid a show brimming with them. Mitchell was joined by Glace Chase for an intimidating reading of I’m Afraid of Americans, which encapsulated Bowie’s dread of the ever-expanding dominance of US culture and fast-food. God knows what he’d make of the current assault by tech barons and AI.
As good as the guests were, Mitchell remained the main event, given the force of his grip on something like Quicksand (“the most negative song I know”), and the inexorable gravity pulling you into an abyss when he sang Dollar Days from Blackstar.
At the end, to pull us back out for the pit, the guests all came together and gave us Heroes. At 63, the gifted Mitchell is one of them, and for more than just one day.