Shania's sense of fun thrills packed house
Morbidly obese ticket prices don't diminish magic
If this music thing doesn't work out for Shania Twain, she has a promising career as a magician.
The country/pop queen from Timmins, Ont., started her Bell Centre show last night with a neat bit of sleight-of-hand: A suspiciously immobile silhouette of the singer appeared on a centre-stage screen seconds before the real thing darted through the crowd. But there were better tricks up her sleeve.
One was coming off like a proletarian artist - signing autographs as if her life depended on it and shaking hands with anyone in arm's length - while charging a morbidly obese sum of money for the pleasure of her company (the "cheap" tickets were going for $64.50; the upper echelon for doctors, lawyers and mob bosses reached $115).
The other was staging a show that was choreographed within an inch of its life, while retaining a sense of fun that thrilled a packed house of 22,000.
The exclamation points that punctuated the first few songs of the set - Man! I Feel Like a Woman! and Up! - said it all: Twain is a gregarious superstar, and perhaps the least introspective artist ever to play the Bell Centre. In her case, that's a compliment. From the circular stage on the middle of the floor to her game attempts at franglais, Twain was adamant about reaching out to her fans.
After remaining on an elevated hub for the opening numbers, the singer descended to the stage's lower level for Honey, I'm Home. She autographed anything that wasn't tied down and collected an infirmary ward's worth of bouquets, all without missing a note. The multitasking didn't say much for any emotional focus required by her songs, but it said a lot for her connection with the crowd.
Twain was careful to circle the stage often, but was also careful to be in the right place; one glad-handing session was abruptly halted when she dashed to her centre-stage perch in time for a blast of fire and sparks. A few more autographs and there could have been a Metallica-size pyro disaster.
Not everything worked: Up! featured a suspect vocal that sounded too doctored to be live. And Forever and For Always was a necessary change of pace, but the mid-tempo number - performed on a rotating stool in a sea of dry ice - remained the blandest love letter in Twain's book. More successful was Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? - a down-home moment from a singer who's been more pop than country for years.
As deadline called, Twain was singing The Woman in Me (Needs the Man in You) while sitting amid her fans. Earlier, she brought a charity-raffle winner on stage for a photo, and came into the crowd to greet a pair of superfans attending their 25th show of the tour. Twain's autographs might be devalued in town this morning, but few Bell Centre crowds have gotten so close to the object of their affections.
Opener Emerson Drive was an apt fit with Twain's mainstream twang, and was energized to be playing a quasi-hometown show (four of the six members come from the Montreal area). Nonetheless, the band seemed dwarfed by the stage and had to work to gain notice, getting the biggest cheers with U2's Where the Streets Have No Name.
jzivitz@thegazette.canwest.com
http://www.canada.com/montreal/mont...2c-5cfd20e5e1af
This "critic" needs a few emails, Shania does not lip sync in concert. During Up! they use some sort of effect on her microphone to get the "album-ish" sound. She actually sounds more like mini-mouse when they do it.
-Chris