Regulars to Fringe Radio will know I am a huge fan of Night Owl Productions and what they’ve done over the past decade or so in entertaining the public with their tribute shows. They have a group of singers and musicians that other shows would be envious of, and while they don’t try to deliver a soundalike-lookalike show they are very faithful to the arrangements of the hit versions and their rapport with the audiences is out of the top drawer.
Step up Hannah Richards, who is one of these top quality singers who has been with Night Owl for a long time, starting as a person distributing flyers to customers and graduating to one of their major vocalists fronting shows like this one, and the Dolly Parton Story. I would have loved to have reviewed her Dolly Parton show but, following the sad death of the great lady during this run, all her shows were sold out, but I am reliably informed by many punters on the way out from the show that they were thrilled.
But I did see the Kate Bush Story and while I’ve mentioned that lookalike-soundalike shows is not high on the Night Owl agenda, Hannah Richards is remarkably similar to Kate, and she absolutely nailed the vocals, particularly on “The Man With The Child In His Eyes” which she sang and played piano on. That was very very impressive. But she was equally at home with “Them Heavy People”, “Babooshka”, “Cloudbusting” and the rest of the set, and the packed crowd lapped it up.
She has a lovely (and very likeable) delivery when telling the story in between songs, and it was so obvious that she is a massive fan of Kate Bush and she clearly wants to sing and perform every song to get as close to Kate’s voice and sound as possible. This was one of the highlights of the Fringe for me as far as music acts are concerned. Hannah also has a new single out which she wrote called “Easy” so if you loved her on stage at the Fringe I’m sure you’ll want to support her by downloading her single.
