ZANG TUMMM TUMB ARTICLES “the first draft of history”

DOLLAR
Wimbledon Theatre, Wimbledon

By Simon Tebbutt

PURE ENTERTAINMENT! Distil the essence of 29 years of commercial pop and you don’t get Adam Ant — you get Dollar. The lights and the dry ice, the explosions and the costume changes, the razzle and the image of romance. You get a show.

Playing a mixture of old chestnuts like ‘Hollywood Nights’, ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, ‘Dancing In The Streets’ — even the tell-tale medley of sixties and seventies hits — plus their own songs, Dollar act the perfect couple, a confected blend of innocence and sexual innuendo. They hold hands, she sits of his knee, they gaze deeply into one another’s eyes, playing out the illusion of the love they’re singing about. The perfect dream. Such showmanship.

There’s enough sugar-coated sex appeal to titillate but never make a mess. I’d love to be able to report that there wasn’t a dry seat in the house, but half the audience looked too young to be troubled by these things and the other half looked well past it.

Confidence in a T-shirt and tight white satin trews, David is the more dynamic of the two, and his voice is much more powerful than Thereza’s — which often comes across as a mere whisper bolstered up by the band when she’s singing on her own because the lad has nipped offstage for a quick drink. But occasionally this power seems to be masking for real musical quality, particularly on numbers like the monumental ‘Young Girl’ which lacked the lyrical quality of the Gary Puckett original.

Still, it’s a well drilled, well choreographed performance which a tight five-piece band and backing singer, and the vision of Thereza as the sexy little girl lost in the gold lame who changes into the chic naughty chambermaid in frilly pink and black stockings will probably be remembered in Wimbledon for many a year.

Naturally the best numbers are their own; ‘Shooting Star’, ‘Who Were You With In The Moonlight?’, the brilliant ‘Hand Held In Black And White’ and the deliberately forgotten for the encore ‘Mirror Mirror’. Although they didn’t quite hit their intention of reproducing the perfection of the recorded item, as far as the audience were concerned they were as near as damn it.

A classy show in a lovely old theatre. It was nothing new, nothing I haven’t seen before in fact and it certainly won’t change my life. But I really enjoyed it. Ah well… that’s entertainment!