(Pic courtesy of Val
Bottomley)
The Piano
Man needs to settle in to the venue before it becomes
a great show, and hopefully it will. (Review by Barry Meehan)
Showtime Australia, renowned for their tribute band
shows, opened their latest offering at Sibaya’s iZulu Theatre last night. The
show features Australian-born piano man Steven Michael who bears a striking
resemblance to the musical maestro.
The Piano
Man features a six-piece band – all South African –
designed to recreate the authentic, streets of New York Billy Joel sound, with
keyboards and accordion, drums, percussion, lead
guitar, bass guitar and a standout saxophonist.
The show kicks off with the last big Billy Joel hit
River of Dreams, which – to my mind,
anyway, would have made a better closing number, but that’s just my humble
opinion. Most of Joel’s better-known songs follow - Just The Way You Are, My Life,
We Didn’t Start the Fire, Piano Man, It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me, New
York State of Mind and For the
Longest Time, with You May Be Right
bringing the first half to a close.
The second half features some rather lesser-known Billy
Joel numbers with Say Goodbye to Hollywood
and Allentown. It is only at this
stage of the show that Steven Michael tells us that he has only been in Durban
for four days and is suffering from “Durban throat”, which explained some of
the voice cracks in the first half. Jokingly, he invites everyone back later in
the run, when the show will sound much better.
Hopefully, he will be right, because the overall
sound needs a lot of tweaking to turn this into a show worth attending. The
bass guitar simply overpowers everything, the drumkit sounds flat, with an
annoying slap reverb, most of what the percussionist does cannot be heard, and
the lead guitarist might as well not be there, only being heard in his great
solo in Big Shot. Every song is
belted out at full volume, and there could be a lot more finesse demonstrated
by the sound desk.
Other numbers in the second half are Only the Good Die Young, Tell Her About It, Big Shot and Moving Out,
leading into the final number Uptown Girl.
Die-hard Billy Joel fans were calling for Honesty,
but unfortunately this didn’t materialise.
Billy Joel has led an extraordinary life as part of
the music scene, but we are not given any snippets of information about his
history, which would have added to the show, breaking up the somewhat longish
playlist.
The Piano Man needs to settle in to the
venue before it becomes a great show, and hopefully it will.
Piano
Man: The Billy Joel Show! runs at Sibaya’s iZulu
Theatre until April 28, 2019. Tickets R250 pp from Computicket,
Shoprite/Checkers or Sibaya Box Office.
For more information visit www.suninternational.com
– Barry Meehan
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