Concert review: Michael Ball

MICHAEL BALLUSHER HALL, EDINBURGH ***

Last seen on an Edinburgh stage in Hairspray at the Playhouse, this set was a showcase of various pop standards interpreted in Michael Ball's own glossy, full-voiced style before he returns to the city in Sondheim's musical, Sweeney Todd.

A couple of songs from the latter were previewed here alongside other favourites from his highly successful musical theatre career, with Ball, a friendly and utterly professional crowd-worker, alluding to the disparity of such a career by pointing out that perhaps he should have performed his version of I Dreamed a Dream wearing his Hairspray dress "as Susan Boyle".

The crowd laughed and cheered along with that, but then Ball enjoys such an almost telepathic rapport with his mostly female fans that every pointed pause as he raised his microphone to his mouth was greeted with glee. In this atmosphere, the whipping off of his bowtie during Queen's Somebody to Love or his encore reappearance in a kilt for a hip-shaking version of Tom Jones's Help Yourself was accompanied by the imagined sound of a thousand mums' and grans' hearts breaking.

Despite the unchallenging formula at work here, this was an unashamed crowd-pleaser which made a strong virtue of Ball's impressive vocal skill and spared no expense with a 16-piece contingent of backing musicians and singers.

Well-suited standards including Avenues & Alleyways, Can't Help Falling in Love and his own Love Changes Everything were complemented by less expected but equally well-presented tracks like Paolo Nutini's Nothing's Gonna Bring Me Down and an almost lounge-bar closing cover of Stevie Wonder's For Once in My Life, adding up to a night which pulled out most of the stops for the converted.