Gabrielle’s backstory – childhood bullying, a suicide attempt and a tabloid feeding frenzy after a former boyfriend was jailed for murder – shouldn’t lend itself to success or longevity in the music business. However, 30 years after the south Londoner’s first single, Dreams, reached No 1, her 30 Years of Dreaming tour is a testament to her survival.
The largely but not entirely retrospective show itself is a good-time old school soul revue. There are audience handclaps, requests from the singer to “let me see your hands”, and she amusingly but accurately describes songs as either “booty shakers” or “hip shakers” (the latter are more gently danceable than the former).
With hair cascading in trademark fashion over her right eye (the legacy of a longstanding eye condition), and wearing a necklace possibly on loan from British Museum’s collection of ancient Egyptian treasures, the Mobo-winning singer is an engaging performer. Despite that troubled early life, her voice is a bundle of joyful excitement and she knowingly observes that many of her songs include the word “sunshine”. They’re variously gently or defiantly soulful, although new song A Place in Your Heart is punchier and rockier.
If there’s a bit less emotional frisson than there was, it’s because she’s left her more melancholy material behind and vacates the stage while her backing singers exuberantly deliver Whitney Houston and Ultra Naté songs. Gabrielle returns for Womack and Womack’s sublime Teardrops and (two songs later) Burt Bacharach’s Walk on By, although four covers in 18 songs is a hefty dollop. Still, there’s unexpected edge when she rails at heavy-handed security – “Some of them should be police. I don’t like the police” – and delivers such a wonderfully robust introduction to Miss You (about “bastards”) that she hastily apologises for a “potty-mouth”.
Chart toppers Rise and Dreams turn into epic, arm-waving sing-songs, but the newer Young and Crazy – a lovely song about embracing getting older – sums up where the 54-year old is at. “I’m growing old disgracefully,” she declares. “I’m loving it and I’m still here.”
• At Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 13 October, then touring.
