An Evening Without Kate Bush

CABARET artist Sarah-Louise Young is bringing her internationally critically acclaimed cult show to the Northern Rivers on Saturday, May 17.

An homage to one of the most influential voices in pop music, the show embraces the fans of Kate Bush’s music and incorporates their memories.

Based in Manchester, England, where the Olivier Award-winner lives with her husband and children, Young is in her fourth month of a four-month Australia/New Zealand tour.

“It’s a long stretch, and I’ve been missing my family very much,” she said in a chat with this masthead on the cusp of the last leg.

“But it’s been amazing – this is my seventh trip here, and I’ve had a great relationship with this country since the 2010 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.”

Young began working on the show with co-creator Russell Lucas in 2013.

“What inspired us was that she hadn’t appeared live for 35 years, and we were interested in how the fans engaged with each other,” Young said.

“Then she announced this big comeback in 2014 with 22 dates at the Hammersmith Apollo, so we shelved it.”

But the idea continued to resurface, and after a few years, the duo felt that the right time to revisit the concept had arrived.

“It took a couple of years because it required a lot of devising as it’s so interactive and relevant to the audience,” Young said.

“No two shows are ever the same. It has a structure, but it has very much to do with who comes that night.

“The show wraps its arms around them, and I don’t know the stories that people will bring until I get into the room.”

“You’ll hear the songs you love like Wuthering Heights, Running Up That Hill, Babooshka and The Man With The Child In His Eyes, but we attach each song to a different experience,” Young said.

Deliberately made in the spirit of the ‘poor theatre’ tradition, Young’s one-woman show is intimate, raw, and unaccompanied.

“It’s one of those shows that is more complicated than it looks – very simple in its staging but quite intricate in its preparation,” she said.

“Many people have her songs for their funeral or that have helped them through addiction. A woman came to show recently who said Don’t Give Up was the song she listened to during chemo.

“I’m sensitive to who wants to join and who doesn’t, but it’s not about me.

“It’s not about impersonation – it’s about hot-wiring people back to the original and where they were when that song touched them.

“I love doing the show, and I’m humbled every single day by doing it,” she said.

For tickets to the dynamic and unique performance, head to brunswickpicturehouse.com/an-evening-without-kate-bush-17-may