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English pop superstar Robbie Williams mulls this over early in this show, having just led the crowd through a bit of triumphant, Freddie Mercury-style sing-and-response and somehow scared the rain away.
It’s a rhetorical question, of course. But, in Williams’ hands, entertainment is many things.
It is, most obviously, fun, something he hasn’t always had over his 35-plus-year career but is absolutely having on this night. Always aware of the cameras catching his every wild-eyed grin down the barrel, he leans into the absurdity of his performance from the moment a part of his stage takes off, with him on it, during opener Rocket .
This sneakily also proves he can make this ephemeral pop lark clever. Rocket , from his current album Britpop , is one of maybe four dud tunes on the set list but Williams finds a way to get everyone to engage even with them, whether by telling us he’s shooting a video to this night’s only other another new song, Pretty Face , so to pretend we’re having the time of their life, or blaming in advance his musical director, drummer Karl, for the inclusion of Hot Fudge .
Because it’s in the set list where Williams proves how selfless an all-time great showman, even with an ego as enormous as his, can be. He has some fantastic songs and he’ll not only fire up the best ones ( Strong , Supreme , Angels and its near-peerless guitar solo among them), he’ll rip through a few unpretentious covers as well. And not just those indulging his crooner fantasies (though we do also get Theme from New York, New York and My Way ) – he even plays Wonderwall and accepts it as one of the biggest singalongs of the night.
At 52, Williams is still in fine voice when he’s singing, in effortlessly exceptional comic form when chatting, and he has spared almost no expense when it comes to the presentation, what with the impressive visuals, multiple dancers and a full, at least 10-piece band. (He draws the line at light-up wristbands, though, admitting he’s kind of the “tight-arse Chris Martin”.)
And contrary to Williams’ accurate insistence he has never been cool, he shows he can be: Kids is spectacularly reinvented with the opening guitar riff from Lenny Kravitz’s Always on the Run , and that same song’s sizzling horn outro features prominently throughout.
Finally, perhaps unexpectedly, Williams seems genuinely sincere about the whole experience, and it’s as moving for us as it is for him. What is entertainment? In his hands it is, quite emphatically, all of this.
Old Fitz Theatre, November 11, until November 15
If you’ve ever wondered why Australia’s last remaining pub theatre – tucked in the basement of Woolloomooloo’s Old Fitzroy Hotel – would run a ‘late-night’ series of shows alongside its main season of plays, look no further than this 9pm offering.
A Number , by acclaimed British playwright Caryl Churchill, has a run time of just 60 minutes and doesn’t follow conventional narrative arcs, making it difficult to slot into main theatre seasons. It’s something we may never see in Sydney if not for its home in a later time slot, when it layers a few props and a new seating configuration over the set of the main season show Scenes from a Friendship , which plays before it every night at 7pm.
There’s clearly a hunger in Sydney for something a little riskier that can only come out late at night: this production sold out before it even opened.
