Reviews

Lulu, Mahony Hall, The Helix, DublinShe hasn't played Ireland in years and years, she has traversed the peaks and troughs of popular entertainer success from the age of 15 to her current looks-defying 55, and still she sells out the gig.

Forty years is a long time in showbusiness, and you might have thought that Lulu would have bought into the Celebrity Squares aesthetic that so many of her generation have succumbed to.

But no, she's a trooper, she still has a good voice, and although her stage show whiffs ever so slightly of cheese (the most irritating sax player in the world really will have to go, as will the matching band outfits of white shirts and faded denims), it's nevertheless a tolerable lesson in how to grow into middle age with a sense of purpose and dignity.

It would seem, however, that Lulu's glory days are well and truly over, yet she carefully rakes over her career, cherry-picking the obvious hits (Shout, The Boat That I Row, To Sir With Love, I'm A Tiger, Boom Bang-A-Bang, The Man Who Sold The World) and judiciously balancing them with several long-forgotten gems (including the classic Stax/Atco near-hit, Oh Me Oh My).

Hints of blue-eyed soul and the fondly recalled 1960's rivalry between her and Dusty Springfield peeked out from behind the high production values of what is essentially stylish, down-to-earth cabaret. That said, in between the arm-waving and the nostalgia-hunting, one could glean that behind the mirror-ball glitz, Lulu still cherishes the notion of being a great R&B singer (which she could certainly have been if she hadn't taken the trite all-round entertainer route so prevalent in the 1960s for anyone with multi-layered singing, acting and modelling talents).

And so it started with a whimper and ended with Shout; the petite entertainer on the road to 60 conscientiously plugs her new album, serving up wafer thin slices of Gorgonzola all the way to the exit signs. Once a trooper, always a trooper? Someone team her up with Pharrell Williams and some decent songwriters for the Lord's sake - who knows what might happen? Stranger things, that's for sure.)