Reviewed on Saturday September 27 (photo by Ashley Mar)
As arena-sized nostalgia acts go (and Sydney has seen its fair share this year, Queen being the most recent), Robbie Williams is a singular performer. It’s a symptom of both the fact he’s never technically gone away – he had a fall from grace in the mid-noughties, yes, but this is no forgotten-star-out-of-retirement tour – and his aptitude for balancing egotastic bravado with unfaltering self-parody. “Do you remember the me of the ’90s?” he asks the audience early on. “Like an obese Justin Bieber.” Even in name, his Swings Both Ways concert is one long joke, so by definition Williams is in on it.
While he made his name via the pop anthems he co-wrote with Guy Chambers, who’s onstage tonight in a musical director’s role, the ostensible reason for Williams’ latest tour is to perform the jazz standards (and imitation standards) from latest album Swings Both Ways and 2001’s Swing When You’re Winning. The all-so-fabulous opener ‘Shine My Shoes’ sets things up, though Williams has to skip half the second verse to catch up with the lyrics being projected on the enormous stage curtain, before said curtain lifts to reveal a three-storey bandstand and a troupe of dancers.
Not that Williams needs much assistance being, well, Robbie Williams; the all-eyes-on-me entertainer and chaperone he was through the peak of his career in stadium pop. The call-and-response shtick doesn’t work so well on these old jazz favourites (see ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’), but ‘Minnie The Moocher’ rather suits his now slightly croaky 40-year-old voice. ‘No One Likes A Fat Pop Star’ hits the heights of auto-satire, Williams dangling from the ceiling in a fat suit and singing about the travails of the discarded celebrity, before he invites a blonde bombshell up from the crowd for a pash during ‘That’s Amore’ (just like the old days), only this time he’s atoning for past excesses, so they get ‘married’ instead – bridal veil and all.
It’s an over-the-top kinda night; a ‘why not?’ to any and every idea pitched in the production meeting, though not all the songs get the requisite punchline. A full children’s choir comes on for ‘High Hopes’ (why not?), and Robbie’s dad Peter arrives from nowhere to duet on ‘Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me’ (why not?), and neither performance convinces, nor seems to serve any musical purpose.
The second act of the show drags on in this way – Williams otherwise distracted when he accepts audience requests for a) a selfie, and b) to sign a pair of breasts – but the fans who are here for Williams’ pop catalogue (read: most of them) get their way with a medley of his classics, from ‘Millennium’ to ‘Come Undone’. ‘Angels’ is the only hit played straight, and it should be the closer, not the recital of ‘Proud Mary’ that ends a patchy act two. Still, it would defy anyone with a half a sense of humour and a heart not to have had a good time with Robbie once again. This star hasn’t faded yet.
