Gig review: Colm Wilkinson in Concert, Edinburgh

THE recent success of the Les Miserables movie version has given Colm Wilkinson’s own solo career a renewed lease of life by association, with the defining high of his varied career as a singer continuing to be the musical’s male lead Valjean in the 1985 West End debut and 1987’s Broadway transfer.

Playhouse

***

Now 69, Wilkinson’s devout fans still clearly want to hear the musical hits, despite his preferences as a singer clearly lying in many areas.

As such this full band concert was somewhat trapped between pillar and post, with Wilkinson flitting deftly between hits of stage, 60s and 70s heritage pop and the rock ’n’ roll of his youth. In the fairly trad setting – seven-piece band of unsmiling but skilled session musos in evening wear, backing singers Siobhán Pettit and Áine Whelan in brightly coloured ballgowns, the affectation of costume changes from one suit jacket to another – the show was held firmly together by a combination of Wilkinson’s easy, Irish-accented wit, his obvious love for every song in the set, and a voice which remains heart-meltingly steeped in gracefully precise emotional resonance.

Signature musical hits like Music of the Night (Phantom of the Opera), Some Enchanted Evening (South Pacific) and The Impossible Dream (Man of La Mancha) were doled out, with the ladies taking turns on the likes of I Dreamed a Dream. Yet the most esoteric choices were often the most successful, including the Beatles She’s Leaving Home, Muddy Waters’ Got My Mojo Workin’ and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, as well as Irish standards Danny Boy and Whiskey in the Jar. It says much for his versatility, in fact, that the cheer for Les Mis’s Bring Him Home was matched only by that for a jokey run-through of the Proclaimers’ (I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles.