The audience attending Oliver Tourle – Live and Backstage have a very different viewpoint from most, as our seats are placed on the stage looking out over a vast empty auditorium, with the artist and band performing across the front of the stage, but facing us.
The lighting effects used to highlight the singers and musicians also, with the extremely clever use of special lighting effects throughout the theatre, light up the empty auditorium behind them which then becomes an enormous, vibrant, colourful backdrop to a superb and extremely varied evening of musical entertainment.
In a bid to encourage and promote local talent, JJ Almond, the new director at the Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells turned the venue over to Oliver for the evening and gave him full creative freedom to create only his second one-man show, and Oliver, a backstage worker at the venue, certainly relishes the opportunity.
The set list contains a huge variety of music from If I Can Dream by Elvis Presley right through to Let Her Go by Passenger by way of two incredibly creative “mash-ups” of Adele’s Someone Like You together with Lady Gaga’s Edge of Glory and Barbra Streisand’s The Way We Were mixed with Bette Midler’s The Rose.
Oliver also gives a nod to the world of Musical Theatre with Tell Me It’s Not True from Blood Brothers followed by Defying Gravity from Wicked before he launches into a whole host of other well known songs like Queen’s Somebody to Love, and a few more obscure ones including From the Ground Up by country singers Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney.
Backed by his Musical Director Emma Painter on piano, Mark Willment on bass guitar, Billy Cunningham on drums and Sam Dunstall on Electric and acoustic guitars and with Lottie Boyd and Betsy-Lee Miller on vocals, the sound is quite full although the balance, in the relatively confined space of the Assembly Hall theatre stage, is occasionally difficult to get exactly right.
This is only the second time that Oliver has performed a full two hour plus show and, during the links between songs, his nerves sometimes get the better of him but, for the capacity audience who have come along to support their local talent, this just makes him more “human” but, with the microphone in his hand and the music in his heart, Oliver’s vocal performance shows very little in the way of nerves.
The second half allows Oliver to take a little time out to showcase his guitarist, Sam, who belts out two fabulous blues numbers, followed by Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water and then Oliver gives his backing singers a chance to shine with a very enthusiastic version of Proud Mary.
After a wonderfully passionate speech in which he thanks family, friends and the Assembly Hall Theatre for their support Oliver finishes his set with an X-Factor style “wall of fireworks” to rapurous applause and well deserved standing ovation from an audience who are here to see just exactly what Tunbridge Wells has to offer in the way of talent – and who have found out that is has a very talented singer called Oliver Tourle.
**** Four Stars