It was Halloween 2008. Thousands of screaming and dressed-up teen girls came to the Tivoli early. Exactly at 20h music starts sounding from the boxes. The excitement rises. A light turns on and reveals a silhouet behind a curtain. De teen girls start to scream. When the stage is slowly filled by a group of dressed-up ladies in masks the screams become louder. The source of the music is a backing track, the stage is richly decorated, all extras have found their place on stage, and finally, the silhouet starts to move. The screaming becomes even louder. When the silhouet disappears and reveals its secret, the screaming becomes deafening; the Princess of Pop, err, the Princess of Plastigoth, is entering the stage. It is the psycho-showgirl alter ego of Kylie Minogue; the alternative scene has found its own Princess, who is adored by thousands of alternative teenage girls across the globe. Just one single release is enough for Autumn to fill up all the venues of an entire tour, only one year after the previous one.

 And it’s completely understandable. Miss Emilie Autumn has found her own unique magic formula to enchant and conquer the alternative world in the most American way ever seen in this scene: fashion, show, glitter, and glamour. So what about the music? Well, there’s the backing track of course. And lip-synching. The show by Autumn and her Bloody Crumpets is famous; her show is an overworking, crazily truning carroussel, an optical circus of decadence, beauty, props, and acts. And even more props. And, of course, tea. Without tea this neo-Victorian industrial tea party is not complete. The amount of attention paid to all details on stage, as much details in as little space as possible, is more over the top than a Broadway musical. Whoever visits a concert by Emilie Autumn knows, or should know, that he or she is entering a visual dream world of theatre, in which music can be heard, and at times can even be heard live.

But the moments that music actually ís heard live, are perfectly fine. In the course of the show Autumn sang more parts live, showing off her powerful voice, albeit she is likely to give in to ‘alternative’ (?) screaming just a bit too much. All elements were present to make it a great and speedy night. Unfortunately, the show lost all speed due to the constant chatter of Miss Autumn and her Crumpets in between. It made the audience restless after a while. The bagan chattering themselves. Though Autumn was extatic about all adoration she received at the beginning of the show, this turn of events couldn’t please her, but she went on. When she started her ‘5 minute violin practice’ on stage, the only times she could show off her actual musical virtuosity, people started leaving for a beer at the bar. After the Crumpets had rturned and she had started the intro for a sencitive cover of the Smiths’ ‘Asleep’, she couldn’t take it any longer and started to yell at the audience. Quieting them nonetheless. She could continue playing her songs, even though ‘Asleep’ was now definitely lost.

 Near the end of her 2-hour show, Autumn finally started to play the songs of her single, starting by ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Her live performance of the song was done surprisingly well; her interpretation gave the song a freaky turn without ever losing respect towards the original. Whereas the sentence ‘Mama, just killed a man’ always sounds a little naive in Freddie Mercury’s interpretation, Autumn sings it like she knows exactly what she’s done; even more so, the act was a very conscious psychotic act, without displaying any kind of feigned innocence. Very impressive. Too bad though that she faked the virtuous guitar/violin solo. The next cover of the single, ‘Girls just wanna have fun’, was performed just as well, followed by Autumn’s personal hymn ‘Thank God I’m pretty’, which ended the show.

All in all, a night with Emilie Autumn is top entertainment, that is, when you have set your expectations straight and perceive it as musically-inspired theatre. Her excellent and highly sexy show is as plastic as it gets, but in her case it is really plastic fantastic. And remember that no one else has ever gotten away with it before in this scene.

Review written by Ilona