An Evening with Rufus Wainwright

Rufus appears in the gloom, ghostlike and motionless, upstage. Gradually I can discern a kind of neck ruff, a long robe with a train. He begins to walk very slowly towards the illuminated grand piano. Aaah, I see. Shakespeare’s Sonnets – that thing he did in Berlin with stage director Robert Wilson - highly stylised cross-dressing version of the sonnets…I’ve seen bits of it on YouTube... The audience, rendered nervous by the pre-performance instructions, remains obediently and respectfully silent during what Rufus has called his "song cycle".

A giant black-ringed eye appears on a screen behind him as he sits down and begins to play "Who are you New York". I realise that said song cycle is going to be the entire new album sung without a pause and without applause. It’s a gutsy, pretentious strategy that works, even if Rufus occasionally falters. In the middle of Sonnet 40 he loses the plot completely – but keeps repeating a musical phrase, sounding surprised at himself, until after half a dozen attempts, he gets there. Oddly, it always felt as if he would. And that, I think, is how you define stage presence -–the sense that you’re in safe (if somewhat histrionic) long-fingered, virtuoso hands.

He’s also taken to groaning and muttering during the grand keyboard flourishes, for all the world like a demented Glenn Gould. I’ve decided he’s also somehow morphing into Stephen Sondheim… This Rufus isn’t as easy to digest as earlier incarnations – and God knows, some of them were pretty demanding… Meanwhile the creepy black-ringed eye melts into several eyes, all slowly opening and closing, hypnotically sinister.

In the interval, I’m still gathering up my ragged emotions after a hypnotic closing rendition of "Zebulon", the giant eye on the screen finally shedding a tragic tear. Now I watch the people who have come to worship, like me, at the shrine of Wainwright. I’m always struck by the diversity of his audience, although tonight I’m sandwiched between two gay men and two dykes, which is a bit of a cliché. But I’ve spotted Josie Lawrence, the queen of improv, close by – and near her, two glamorous blonde women who look like they should be shopping in Dubai; a kissing couple; a besuited businessman reading an ebook, and a girl wearing dungarees and a turban, as if on a teabreak from a munitions factory.

My friends in Bradbury are all sick of me going on about Rufus. Here I feel comfortable, among a select band of strange and obsessive individuals who feel as I do. I hear them talking in the bar. They use words like ‘wondrous’, ‘heart-rending’, ‘glorious’, ‘luminous’ – and they’re not even embarrassed!

After the interval the curtain rises to a stage glistening with tealights. I think briefly of Liberace. Rufus bounds on, sneakers, jeans and a diamante brooch on his jacket. He’s cheery and chatty and witty, his usual public self. (Who knows what his private self is like?) He admits that tonight’s debut performance of the "song cycle" had him "shitting bricks"… But he knows he can do no wrong, this audience adores him, even when he fumbles, goes into the wrong key, forgets the lyrics, curses quietly to himself. He sings every possible song you could want him to sing, with his usual brio, in that gorgeous baritone that wraps around you like an embrace. Then he dedicates the next song to his mother, Kate McGarrigle, and sings a song she composed, as he says ironically, "during the brief moment of happiness she shared with my father." The song is "The Walking Song". He suddenly seems anxious, determined. He arrives beautifully at the last verse, begins to weep, choking on the hopeful lyrics. His mother died recently.

Rufus leaves the stage, wiping the tears from his face. But he returns, recovered, for two resounding encores. During the show he has also sung "Dinner at Eight", a haunting, bitter song about his love/hate relationship with his father, singer Loudon Wainwright III. And during his "song cycle" he sang "Martha, it’s your Brother Calling…" to his sister Martha, written during his mother’s illness. This family – all performers – seems able to expose every nuance of its turbulent relationships for public consumption. (Martha wrote a song called Bloody M – F – Asshole about her father. And Loudon wrote "Rufus is a Tit Man" about his son. Anna wrote "Go Leave" about the end of her marriage.) I guess they just do what the rest of us do in private. Is that why I’m so intrigued? I don’t know. (My own family, similarly beset with intrigue and turmoil, has managed to sit primly on its neuroses and soldier on, for the most part silently.) I leave Sadlers Wells in a happy daze, having sated my obsession for a while. Well. Until the next concert. He’s performing in Ipswich in two weeks time. And I have tickets!

If you’re curious, read more about Rufus Wainwright by clicking here…..