This was published 11 months ago
Swapping places with Kate Bush for a rousing, wuthering tribute to fandom
By Nick Dent
On August 26, 2014, at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, Kate Bush – reclusive art-pop icon of Wuthering Heights and Running Up That Hill fame – appeared live in concert for the first time in more than 35 years.
For cabaret performer and longtime fan Sarah-Louise Young, the moment was bittersweet. Firstly, because she could not be there: the Kate Bush Before the Dawn concerts clashed with one of the biggest gigs of her life in Toronto performing her own Julie Andrews show, Julie Madly Deeply.
Let’s exchange the experience: Sarah-Louise Young’s An Evening Without Kate Bush explores the relationship Kate Bush fans have with her music.
The star’s unexpected return to live performing also threw a spanner into the new one-woman show Young was developing with director Russell Lucas, An Evening without Kate Bush.
“We pressed pause on the show, because people would think we were just cashing in,” Young says.
A decade later Bush has given no indication of ever performing live again, and yet her currency as a cultural phenomenon has continued to grow. A 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, she is celebrated annually with worldwide events such as The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, in which fans dress up to recreate the dance sequence from the video of her 1978 debut single.
The worldwide return to the charts of 1985 hit Running Up That Hill in the wake of its use in Netflix series Stranger Things introduced a new generation to her work, and Brisbane’s Pub Choir went viral with their 1600-voice rendition of the song (receiving an email of praise from Bush herself).
In the meantime, Young’s Kate Bush show has taken her around the world and will play return seasons in Perth and Adelaide this summer, as well as making its debuts in Queensland and at Sydney Festival.
Speaking online from her home in Manchester, Young says the show comes from “a complete place of love”.
“The world doesn’t need another Kate Bush tribute show, but there’s a different story to tell – the relationship her fans have with her music,” she says.
“The world doesn’t need another Kate Bush tribute show, but there’s a different story to tell.”
Sarah-Louise Young
To develop the show Young and Lucas went searching on Facebook and fan sites for stories. She gives the example of Bush’s 1980 single Babooshka. A top five hit in the UK and Australia, the song was a favourite of a Russian woman who grew up in London only ever hearing her accent in popular culture in the mouths of Bond villains.
“When the song came on the radio suddenly everyone was interested in getting to know her. So because of that I have learned Babooshka in Russian, painstakingly!
“At the start of the show I always ask people what songs they love, and I weave the answers into the performance.”
Young grew up in Canterbury with four music-loving older brothers, one of whom had an infamous pinup of Kate in a revealing leotard on his wall – “I think she was a lot of people’s first crush” – and recalls dancing around the living room with a hairbrush singing Wuthering Heights at age four.
She discovered cabaret at Bristol University and went on to study musical theatre at the Mountview drama school in South London. “At the time it was called ‘Les Mountview’ because so many people ended up in Les Mis after studying there.
“I was going for conventional jobs in theatre and telly but I kept coming back to cabaret, because it was this place where if you had an idea you could put it on stage immediately and see if it worked.”
A show she co-created called Cabaret Whore was selected for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and “many creative doors opened”. Barbra Streisand-themed show Simply Barbra started her down the road of shows dedicated to a single intriguing singer.
Now a member of the board of the Edinburgh Fringe, Young makes a point of singing the Kate Bush material in its original keys, even though the songs are “like vocal assault courses”.
“They were the hardest songs I’ve ever had to learn. Harder than Rachmaninoff. Harder than Bach chorales, harder than Sondheim. Because she doesn’t play by conventional songwriting rules. She’s heart-led.
“People do get strangely moved by the show, which is very satisfying for me.” Sarah-Louise Young in An Evening without Kate Bush.
Bush herself hasn’t seen the show as far as Young knows, but “I would love that. It would be hard for the audience to relax because she is a quasi-religious figure to some people, but it would give me immense joy if she could see it and appreciate how much love and warmth and humour and silliness is in there…
“My hope is that whatever kind of fan you are you will get something out of being in a room full of people who are in love, basically – not with me, but with her.”
An Evening without Kate Bush plays during Sydney Festival at Wharf 1 Theatre (Jan 18-21), Redlands Performing Arts Centre (Jan 24), Events Centre Caloundra (Jan 25), HOTA Surfers Paradise (Jan 27), Brisbane Powerhouse (Jan 28), Perth Fringe World (Jan 30-Feb 11) and Adelaide Fringe (Feb 16-Mar 2).