The Bowie Show last night at the Gold­ers Green Hip­po­drome was a bit of a leap into the unknown – both in terms of the venue and the per­for­mance. How­ev­er cre­ative direc­tor Simon Gwilliam’s vision shone bril­liant­ly, brought to life by his Goon Squad: a young, vibrant cast of musi­cians and dancers with tech­ni­cal skill plus an innate abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate emo­tion­al res­o­nance. With the songs shared between three “Bowies” (two male and one female), and an excep­tion­al live band, this pro­duc­tion tru­ly came alive. The sound, danc­ing and visu­als felt fresh and vibrant, leav­ing no aspect of the show lack­ing in any way.

The Gold­ers Green Hip­po­drome ini­tial­ly did seem like a quirky choice of venue – set in a sub­ur­ban area of Lon­don with nary a pub or any form of nightlife in the vicin­i­ty, and far from Lon­don gig goers’ usu­al east Lon­don haunts. The Hip­po­drome has been home to an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian megachurch since 2021; we chat­ted to church offi­cials and dis­cov­ered how they are now dip­ping their toes in the water as far as host­ing pro­duc­tions is con­cerned. This leg­endary build­ing has obvi­ous­ly been well loved and well cared for and retains its integri­ty and charm. And, as an ex-music hall venue, the Gold­ers Green Hip­po­drome was a fit­ting set­ting for a show root­ed in music his­to­ry. Seat­ed in the front row of the bal­cony, we enjoyed a fan­tas­tic view of the stage.

The show takes you on a musi­cal jour­ney of Bowie’s life, open­ing with Space Odd­i­ty and cov­er­ing sev­er­al of his icon­ic albums – what to include and what to leave out must present a giant headache for any show cura­tor. One of many stand­out moments of the first half was Moon­age Day­dream fea­tur­ing an excep­tion­al gui­tar solo by Lau­ra Browne.

Bowie was among the first white per­form­ers to appear on the US TV show Soul Train, and this icon­ic per­for­mance pro­vid­ed the back­drop for tonight’s treat­ment of Fame. It was the per­fect vehi­cle for fab­u­lous retro cos­tumes and plen­ty of ener­getic, 70s inspired danc­ing. The first half of the show con­clud­ed with a pow­er­ful ren­di­tion of Wild is the Wind, brought to life by Sian Crowe’s superb vocals.

In addi­tion to the 27 fea­tured songs, oth­ers made sub­tle appear­ances. A seg­ment of the brood­ing track Warsza­wa sur­faced dur­ing the sec­ond act, while the lyrics from We Are The Dead (from the Dia­mond Dogs album) were deliv­ered as a spo­ken-word poem, adding both depth and vari­ety to the show.

Vocal­ist Greg Oliv­er cap­tured the raw inten­si­ty and ten­sion of I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans. Most of the songs fea­tured dancers; for this num­ber only the musi­cians were on stage, which height­ened the dra­ma. The sec­ond half of the show chart­ed Bowie’s jour­ney toward his poignant final num­bers. The pre­sen­ta­tion of Lazarus and Black Star brought two haunt­ing­ly emo­tion­al tracks to life, evok­ing a pro­found sense of clo­sure as they reflect­ed the end of Bowie’s jour­ney. The show closed with a glo­ri­ous­ly rous­ing ren­di­tion of Heroes and the stand­ing ova­tion that fol­lowed was a fit­ting con­clu­sion to the evening.

The Bowie Show is cur­rent­ly tour­ing
The Bowie Show

Pho­tos all tak­en on iPhone