INTERVIEW:
Sarah-Louise Young (An Evening Without Kate Bush)
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I have been doing a run of features…
PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Holland
this past few weeks, as Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, turns forty-four on Thursday (17th February). In a related interview, I have been finding out more about acclaimed performer Sarah-Louise Young and her celebrated and hugely popular show, An Evening Without Kate Bush. It is a terrific mix of cabaret, music and comedy (“Kate’s not there, but you are. Acclaimed performer Sarah-Louise Young (Cabaret Whore, The Showstoppers, La Soiree) has teamed up with theatremaker Russell Lucas (Warped at VAULT Festival) to explore the music and mythology of one of the most influential voices in British music. From releasing Wuthering Heights at the age of 19 to selling out the Hammersmith Apollo nearly forty years later, Bush has always surprised and confounded her critics. Through it all her fans have stayed strong. Young invites you to celebrate her songs with this unique and mind-blowing show”). Currently showing at the Soho Theatre, I would recommend everyone who is a Kate Bush fan to go and get a ticket and see the show. Even if you are not well-versed when it comes to Bush, it is a brilliant night out that you won’t regret! I ask Sarah-Louise Young about An Evening Without Kate Bush, when she discovered the music of the British icon, whether there are any more dates of her tour planned, and what she would ask Kate Bush if she ever came to meet the icon. It has been informative, fun and fascinating getting to know more about…
A tremendous performer and Kate Bush devotee.
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Hi Sarah-Lou. Your incredible show, An Evening Without Kate Bush, is currently running at the Soho Theatre. What has it like being back on stage, and what have the audiences’ reactions been like?
Thank you so much for coming. It’s been a total joy to bring this show to London after nearly a two year wait due to Covid. We did a small U.K. tour last autumn of an extended two-act version, and the response both on the road and here has been tremendous. Of all the shows I have created, this is the one which most celebrates the people in the room and their stories. I was invited to perform it online during the pandemic, but I really wanted to wait to be able to do it in person.
The show is massively influenced by each audience on the night, and I never know how it’s going to go until it’s over! The first few live shows after a long time of performing just in my sitting room on Zoom were surreal - but it was wonderful to be back.
PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Holland
You celebrate the songs and music of Kate Bush in a unique show. The visual nature of An Evening Without Kate Bush is one of its strengths. What is it like preparing for each show and ‘inhabiting’ Kate Bush?
I do a lot of stretching!
When my brilliant co-creator Russell Lucas and I were developing the show, we never set out to impersonate Kate Bush. It would be impossible! She’s unique. We were more interested in the fans and their relationship with her music and mythology. We aim to treat the songs respectfully and playfully, leaning into Kate’s own sense of humour and fun whilst maintaining the vocal rigour they require. I have to look after myself physically whenever I perform, but for this show especially as there is so much movement in it. I warm-up my body, my voice and often sing through a few songs beforehand to climb back inside the often complex musical landscape of her music.
“We were more interested in the fans and their relationship with her music and mythology”.
It’s easy to get lost in tracks like Hounds of Love, because they are so brilliantly percussive and she weaves lyrics around each other so sections don’t always mirror each other. You can’t lose focus or you get lost! I also like to tune into the audience as they enter if I can (at the Soho, my dressing room is right next to the stage so, although I can’t hear specific words, I can get a feel for whether they are a lively crowd or a little reserved).
It might be an impossible question, but are there particular moments of the show that you relish the most? Any particular personal highlights?
It’s a great question. In my Julie Andrews show, Julie Madly Deeply, one of my favourite moments is eight seconds where I am moving a microphone. It’s nearly the end of the show; the audience is hopefully with me; the underscore is beautiful; there is a delicious lighting change and I’m about to speak with her words for the first time. It always makes me tingle. In A.E.W.K.B. I love the moment, usually about half-way through Don’t Give Up, when the couple dancing on stage have realised they basically get to hug for a six minutes and, after some expected clowning about, just start to relax and enjoy the opportunity to be close. The audience is often singing with me, and it’s a lovely moment of coming together.
At the end of the song, I thank them and guide them carefully to their seats and they often say a big thank you or lean in for a hug. I love that moment. I guess my favourite parts are when something spontaneous or unexpected happens as a result of some audience interaction. They keep me on my toes, and anything unique to that gathering of people reminds them and me that this night, this configuration of people will never happen again.
It’s special. I like theatre which is made with love and danger; that excites me.
Can you remember when you discovered the music of Kate Bush? What was it about her that struck you and fostered that devotion?
My big brother Matt was a big fan, so her music was always in the house. I do remember Wuthering Heights in 1979, although I was only four. Hounds of Love was the album which did it for me. I was ten, and each time one of her videos featured on Top of the Pops, it was like a mini-movie. I loved her eyes, her voice, the drama, the humour - it must have appealed to my theatrical nature.
Later, I listened with more mature ears to her other work and was just blown away by her constant evolution as an artist and trailblazing experimentation.
Do you have a favourite song, album or period of Kate Bush’s music? If you could travel back in time and spend a moment with her, where might that be?
We open the show with And Dream of Sheep, which is absolutely beautiful. I could pop back and tell her to put some more clothes on when she was filming the video in the flotation tank so she doesn’t get hypothermia!
Of course, I would have loved to have seen her live on her Tour of Life show back in 1979, but I would have got in the way! If I could be a fly on the wall for a video, it would be Sat In Your Lap. I used to be scared of the Minotaur - but it looked like a lot of bonkers fun to film.
Oh goodness, this is a tough question. Okay, ultimate moment to go back to but only if I could be an invisible ghost unseen and unheard… I’d love to have heard her composing The Man with the Child In His Eyes when she was thirteen. Alone with her piano… working out the melody and the words. That would be something. But her solitude is part of what makes her the artist she is, so instead I’ll settle for the recording of Get Out of My House when, if memory serves me well from the book, she asked people to wander around the outside of the studio making spooky noises to try and scare her! I could have been one of those people.
You did say I got five choices right?
Bush’s music and work seems more popular now than it ever does. Why do you think she remains so adored and intriguing to so many people?
Her fans have travelled with her and as she has evolved as an artist. She has become the soundtrack to their lives. That’s my oven-ready hypothesis. I also think she influenced so many other artists that the whole music scene is steeped in her musical juices as it were. She was one of the first people to experiment with the Fairlight. She mastered complex sampling of vocals, including the Trio Bulgarka from Hungary… and, if you read the list of pop royalty lining up to play a couple of bars on her albums, everyone wants to work with her.
She never shied away from writing about the largeness of life either - epic themes, the loneliness of love, the wonder of creation, the sensuality of being human. Her albums are somewhere you can climb inside and dream in. She’s one of us and yet totally Other. She’s a tea-drinking mum and an Ivy-Clad Goddess.
“She never shied away from writing about the largeness of life either - epic themes, the loneliness of love, the wonder of creation, the sensuality of being human”.
If you could ask Kate Bush one question, what do you think you might ask her?
“Please would you come and see our show?”.
We’d love her to but she’d have to come in a disguise, or else the audience would lose their reason. I feel like she’s said what she needs to say in her music. Perhaps I’d just ask her if she’d like a cup of tea and we’d see what happens next…
Are there plans to take An Evening Without Kate Bush further in 2022? Might we see more shows after the current run?
Yes. We are on tour from 1st March and are hopping all over the U.K., from Guildford to Perth, Southend to Sale. The dates can be found at www.withoutkatebush.com, and we are adding more all the time. I’ll also be up at the Edinburgh Fringe again alongside a new show I’m making called The Silent Treatment about a singer who loses their voice. I’d also love to take the show to Australia (where she has a big following). We were in talks with Sydney Opera House, but then the world changed. My partner and I wrote a book during lockdown called The RSVPeople, and I would love to be able to get a copy to Kate somehow… if anyone has an address?
To end with, I will play out a Kate Bush song of your choice. Which one do you think we should hear and why?
Ooh, let’s have a bit of Hammer Horror!
We do this one in the two-act touring version of our show and it’s brilliantly theatrical. She’s amazing in the video. I was surprised to find that a lot of people don’t know it (to me, it’s one of the classics). If you asked me tomorrow I’d probably choose a different one, as they are all brilliant but, for today, it’s Hammer Horror. Thanks for asking!