This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Tony Hadley at 80s Rewind - Scarborough
2nd September 2011
This has originally been planned for the day after Capesthorne Hall and one of the reasons I bought tickets was that I would already be in the north of England and although it would be a drive across the country it wouldn't be as far as coming from home. I could have cancelled the tickets, but as it was a seated show and the tickets I had were the nearest to the stage that was available, I decided to go to the re-arranged date. I'd already lost money when the date was changed and return train tickets were much more expensive from home.
After a just over six hour train journey and meeting Wendy on my train at Birmingham, we arrived in Scarborough at around 2.30 pm. We walked to our guest house not far from the Scarborough Open Air Theatre. Around 5.15 pm we made our way down to the venue, but instead of being let in straight away as indicated by our tickets, we had to wait a while. but it didn't make any difference to where we sat as it was reserved. Instead of being the front row, we found that there was a row for disabled people and their accompanying people. There had been no indication that this would be the case when I booked the tickets and in my book Row A is the front. and a few of the people in front of us seemed not to be disabled.
The open air theatre in Scarborough was originally opened in the 1930's but had closed in the 1970's, but it had been recently refurbished, seats installed and re-opened in 2010. The stage is situated on an island, surrounded by a lake. This makes the stage 30 metres from the nearest point in the audience.
The show started around 7 pm and there were three acts on first - The Christians, Doctor and the Medics and China Crisis. They all sang a few songs each and were backed by a band made up of Richard Brook, Matt Backer, Richie Barrett, Vinzenz Benjamin, Lyndon Connah, Lily Gonzales and Steve Kelly.
Once their part of the show was over and a quick shuffle round of the items on stage (and a comfort and refreshments break for the audience), it was time for the main event of the evening, Tony, Go West and ABC.
I haven't got a set list, would have had to do some swimming to get one ...., I wrote down what Tony did in his parts of the show. Usually, all three bands would perform successively with some parts of the show done together, but this wasn't the case with this show in Scarborough.
The show started with Go West coming on and then they were joined by Tony for 'Boys of Summer' and 'Addicted to Love', Go West went off and Tony continued with 'Only When You Leave', 'Lifeline' and 'Through the Barricades'. Tony and his band went off and ABC came to the stage for their set, then Go West were back. It was then time for Tony and his band to return for 'Somebody Told Me', 'True' and 'Gold'. The show was finished off with 'I Predict A Riot' and Martin Fry, Peter Cox, Richard Drummie, Matt Backer and others came back on the stage for this high octane finish.
I liked this format, it made for a good singalong and the audience liked the selection of songs. Tony made some comments about how far he was from the audience and about having to swim and made a few swimming actions with his arms. I think this venue could be improved by having a jetty out into the lake from the stage, where the artistes could wander out onto as and when. It seems when Elton John came to this venue in June, there was extra seating built over the lake, so those people would have been much closer to the stage.
Unfortunately only about 3000 tickets had been sold out of a capacity of 7 - 8000 so building seating over the lake was unnecessary. I think that changing the date from July to September had made some people very cross (myself included) as I lost money on things that I couldn't cancel and then it cost me more in the end. I think venues should think long and hard before changing dates of shows.
The uspside of everything was that the weather was dry and the early evening fairly sunny. My photos aren't terribly good (lots of them were blurred), but thanks to optical zoom, cropping and for a donation of a few from Wendy, I managed to have a few for you to look at. The one where everything upside down, is not a mistake, but the reflection in the lake. The first one is to show you the lake in front of us.
Denise