In his latest self-titled Netflix documentary, Robbie Williams seems again at his storied life and profession with the candour and acceptance of a person who has spent plenty of time in costly remedy. Tonight’s set in Hyde Park – a one-off UK competition date for the British Summer time Time sequence – is equally framed because the story of a star who flew too near the solar, coming right down to earth and discovering peace there. Wearing all white, Robbie introduces his 1999 single Robust with a attribute half joke: “I’ll solely know if I may be weak with you in case you can sing alongside a cappella to one in every of my lesser-known hits.”
Spanning his 34 year-long profession, the set is a sort of musical memoir. Robbie guides us by way of his early days with Take That by way of dwell commentary on the famously lewd Do What U Like video (“that’s Jason Orange, the one together with his nipples out”). To symbolize the 1995 journey to Glastonbury when he shed his boyband trappings for good, he performs a sequence of Britpop covers, amongst them a weird however joyous tackle Parklife by Blur, full with a marching band and Danny Dyer doing the Phil Daniels half. Come Undone expresses his struggles with alcohol, medicine and melancholy, which is reduce by way of by the straightforward subsequent contentment of Love My Life.
Regardless of its earnest framing, the entire present hinges on the strain between slick pop efficiency and the extra earthy attraction of selection reveals and end-of-pier entertainers. Robbie is bawdy however by no means crude or cringe. When he places on a sequin model of the long-lasting crimson Adidas tracksuit high he wore on his insurgent journey to Glastonbury, it’s clear he’s performing drag of himself – enacting his iconic gestures, songs and costumes with the essential wink that makes his attraction so enduring.
The present solely falters when its earnestness is delivered with out a chaser of humour, significantly throughout Promoting Area and She’s the One. Regardless of all of the (usually genuinely affecting) allusions to his survival regardless of every thing, probably the most shifting components of the set come when no phrases are wanted to clarify them: a devastating efficiency of Really feel with no backing dancers or projections; the sing-along forgiveness of Again for Good. “You’d higher be good, as a result of I’m phenomenal,” Robbie says on the very begin of the set – and miraculously, effortlessly, he’s.