Take That have never been shy when it comes to repackaging their past. In 2018, they followed two official best-of collections with Odyssey, a Stuart Price-produced curio in which they “re-imagined” their greatest hits. Around the same time, band captain Gary Barlow – now overseeing just two teammates, Mark Owen and Howard Donald – was brutally honest about the band’s standing as a legacy act more focused on ticket sales than streams. “Even if [the album is] a flop, we’re still going to go on tour next year and play to 600,000 people.”
Fast forward eight years and the band have sidestepped the studio time and are instead lightly “re-imagining” an entire old tour. And not just any tour. When it first played stadiums in summer 2009, Take That Presents The Circus became the fastest selling jaunt in UK history, making more than £40m in profit. Without an obvious anniversary peg, on paper this unusual reboot of a widely seen show (even the DVD release broke sales records) has the feel of profit-obsessed businessmen stuck in a creative cul-de-sac.
In reality, as a giant sky blue air balloon hovers over a lightly toasted, wine drunk crowd, all cynicism seems to evaporate. While the setlist has barely changed – the Owen-lead Babe has replaced the departed Jason Orange’s Wooden Boat, while recent single You’re a Superstar offers an excuse for a toilet break – its focus on their gold-plated greatest hits means that by the end of act one they’ve already rattled through Pray, A Million Love Songs and Back for Good. For the latter, a smaller B-stage is peppered with shooting water fountains, before a giant mechanical elephant emerges from underneath the stage to walk them to the Big Top-accented main stage.
Everywhere you look there’s spectacle. A troupe of dancers share the stage with fire-breathers, tightrope walkers, clowns (one, Joe, briefly gets stuck in the air balloon after it fails to descend), trapeze artists, trampolinists and – why not? – a hair-hanging aerialist. During Relight My Fire everyone involved seems to be holding a naked flame of some description, dancing in front of a devilish inflatable ringmaster. Among the eye-popping circus paraphernalia, the three stars do their best to focus attention, breaking out some of the old It Only Takes a Minute choreography during a high octane 90s medley, and putting on the old razzle-dazzle for a jaunty Shine. Howard and Mark even try their hand at unicycling, while perpetual Butlin’s redcoat Gary rides around on a kid’s bike with stabilisers.
While other pop acts use conceptual frameworks loosely, here the circus theme rarely lets up. During Never Forget, the trio are joined by a marching band and tap dancers, while the 30ft elephant briefly makes a reappearance during the encore. For the closing Rule the World, however, it’s just the band lit by a sea of phone lights, buffeted by a choir of lightly sloshed voices. It’s a genuinely lovely moment and a reminder that despite the sense of deja vu, and the inherent cash grab nature of any reboot, it’s Take That’s undeniable anthems that people can’t get enough of.
• Take That play St Mary’s Stadium, Southampton, 30 May; then tour the UK and Ireland until 4 July
