Springsteen on Broadway by Bruce Springsteen. (2018)

Springsteen on Broadway by Bruce Springsteen.

Walter Kerr Theatre, Tuesday 17^th April 8.00pm

I didn’t expect to see this show. Tickets are very expensive, and the entire run was sold out months ago. On a whim, I used a slightly dodgy third-party vendor to secure a seat at the Walter Kerr theatre. Thank you, Linda Lawson, for making your very expensive purchase available.

The Boss did not disappoint. He delivered the excerpts from his autobiography with flair, confidence and showmanship. He proved to be an adept performer with a great sense of comic timing when appropriate. The piece covers his often-fraught relationship with his parents and bandmates and uses a more or less chronological arc to reflect on his life: from the self-deprecating stories about his early ambitions to anecdotes that deflate the mythology of his ‘born-to-run’ persona to the tragedy of experiencing the loss of close friends and confidants as time passes, Bruce proves to be a compelling raconteur. Armed with an acoustic guitar and grand piano, Bruce plays a selection of his most autobiographical songs, which reinforce the connections between his life and his art. The strip-backed songs shine like rough diamonds in the intimate space, which is small enough for Bruce to go off-mic and still be heard clearly.

The space and the subtle lighting effects provide a subtle setting for the performance, which, while theatrical, never becomes overly earnest or artificial. The highlight for me was ‘Born in the USA’, a much-misunderstood song that mixes anger with pride, politics with passion and patriotism with despair. Bruce turns up the volume, and rocks out with an open-tuned slide guitar accompaniment that highlights the song’s emotional and political ambiguities. He’s also perfected the art of speaking while providing an atmospheric accompaniment on whatever instrument he happens to be playing, he often let his noodling set the mood for his stories.

The audience were obviously enthralled, and I felt moved by the way this superstar celebrity opens himself up on stage, giving his fans a glimpse of his fragility, his vulnerability, his foibles, but most of all, his humanity.