Take That have never been shy when it comes to repackaging their past. In 2018, they followed two official best-of collections with Odyssey, a Stuart Price-produced curio in which they \u201cre-imagined\u201d their greatest hits. Around the same time, band captain Gary Barlow \u2013 now overseeing just two teammates, Mark Owen and Howard Donald \u2013 was brutally honest about the band\u2019s standing as a legacy act more focused on ticket sales than streams. \u201cEven if [the album is] a flop, we\u2019re still going to go on tour next year and play to 600,000 people.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the stage sets for Take That\u2019s The Circus Live. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole\/Getty Images for Take That<\/p>\n
Fast forward eight years and the band have sidestepped the studio time and are instead lightly \u201cre-imagining\u201d an entire old tour. And not just any tour. When it first played stadiums in summer 2009, Take That Presents The Circus became the fastest selling jaunt in UK history, making more than \u00a340m in profit. Without an obvious anniversary peg, on paper this unusual reboot of a widely seen show (even the DVD release broke sales records) has the feel of profit-obsessed businessmen stuck in a creative cul-de-sac.<\/p>\n
Perpetual Butlin\u2019s redcoat Gary Barlow. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole\/Getty Images for Take That<\/p>\n
In reality, as a giant sky blue air balloon hovers over a lightly toasted, wine drunk crowd, all cynicism seems to evaporate. While the setlist has barely changed \u2013 the Owen-lead Babe has replaced the departed Jason Orange\u2019s Wooden Boat, while recent single You\u2019re a Superstar offers an excuse for a toilet break \u2013 its focus on their gold-plated greatest hits means that by the end of act one they\u2019ve already rattled through Pray, A Million Love Songs and Back for Good. For the latter, a smaller B-stage is peppered with shooting water fountains, before a giant mechanical elephant emerges from underneath the stage to walk them to the Big Top-accented main stage.<\/p>\n
Everywhere you look there\u2019s spectacle. A troupe of dancers share the stage with fire-breathers, tightrope walkers, clowns (one, Joe, briefly gets stuck in the air balloon after it fails to descend), trapeze artists, trampolinists and \u2013 why not? \u2013 a hair-hanging aerialist. During Relight My Fire everyone involved seems to be holding a naked flame of some description, dancing in front of a devilish inflatable ringmaster. Among the eye-popping circus paraphernalia, the three stars do their best to focus attention, breaking out some of the old It Only Takes a Minute choreography during a high octane 90s medley, and putting on the old razzle-dazzle for a jaunty Shine. Howard and Mark even try their hand at unicycling, while perpetual Butlin\u2019s redcoat Gary rides around on a kid\u2019s bike with stabilisers.<\/p>\n
The elephant stage design in The Circus Live. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole\/Getty Images for Take That<\/p>\n
While other pop acts use conceptual frameworks loosely, here the circus theme rarely lets up. During Never Forget, the trio are joined by a marching band and tap dancers, while the 30ft elephant briefly makes a reappearance during the encore. For the closing Rule the World, however, it\u2019s just the band lit by a sea of phone lights, buffeted by a choir of lightly sloshed voices. It\u2019s a genuinely lovely moment and a reminder that despite the sense of deja vu, and the inherent cash grab nature of any reboot, it\u2019s Take That\u2019s undeniable anthems that people can\u2019t get enough of.<\/p>\n
Take That play St Mary\u2019s Stadium, Southampton, 30 May; then tour the UK and Ireland until 4 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Take That have never been shy when it comes to repackaging their past. In 2018, they followed two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-452913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}