Orbison’s spectre looms over flat show
It’s the concert experience of the future! Today! And it’s boring.
Forget the ethical considerations involved in raising a performer from the dead against his or her will for a moment, or the simple, gnawing feeling that the act of clinging to the past through technology could be viewed as kind of sad and not a little ghoulish. At the end of the day, those thoughts would probably be easy enough to set aside — at least temporarily — if the product actually delivered. I’m not sure it does. Not yet.
Sure, it was neat to see a spectral Roy Orbison rise from the floor as if through an invisible trap door and take his place before a full orchestra to perform “Only the Lonely” at the Sony Centre on Sunday night, where In Dreams: Roy Orbison in Concert — The Hologram Tour made its Toronto debut before a noticeably less-than-capacity crowd, some members of which had paid $300 or more for the privilege of sitting up close. But “neat” was really about as deep as you could go with the 16-song show. One got the point very quickly. Then one got bored.
Yes, the three-dimensional laser projection of a mid-career Orbison, who died in 1988 at 52, was thoroughly realistic — little details such as the occasional glint of a spotlight on his guitar or the way the tassels on his jacket were always ruffling in the breeze blown from an imaginary fan were actually quite spectacular to behold — and the digitally remastered vocal takes of “Crying,” “In Dreams,” “Pretty Paper” and the rest of the lonely-boy hits playing over the live instrumentation were bell-clear and served as timeless testament to the loveliness and gentle vulnerability of Orbison’s singular voice. But never once was anyone in the room under the illusion that they were watching anything but an illusion, and before too long the illusion and its limited bag of tricks began to wear out its welcome.
Granted, Orbison — while alive — wasn’t exactly Jim Morrison or Robert Plant onstage. But the holo-Roy’s repertoire of movements was so limited that a nod to the crowd or the orchestra or a spread of its arms or a “thank you” — or, occasionally, vanishing in a puff of smoke — would draw applause. For a while, anyway. The third time the hologram oozed up through the stage, the applause at Roy’s return had noticeably diminished. People were tired. One got the sense that a lot of folks in attendance had realized about halfway through the “per- formance” that it wasn’t going to get any more exciting than this and maybe it hadn’t been worth $300 and now simply wanted to hear “Pretty Woman” and get it over with and go the hell home.
Maybe I’m projecting a little bit, as there were audible gasps of wonder here and there, and whoops of delight when a favourite song was recognized. But you could have had a reasonably similar experience watching old concert footage of Orbison at home, and probably a livelier experience watching one of the many live performers who make the rounds these days doing capable impersonations.
A Ticketmaster search of the name “Roy Orbison,” in fact, currently turns up the Roy Orbison & the Traveling Wilburys Experience, Roy Orbison Returns, Roy Orbison Reborn, Roy Orbison Orchestrated, Larry Branson: A Tribute to Roy Orbison, Blue Bayou: Roy Orbison and The Lonely: A Tribute to Roy Orbison.
Presumably some of those performances involve someone donning dark glasses and a black wig with long bangs and giving much the same impression of Orbison being alive as BASE Hologram’s version of the same. Just saying.
Anyway, yes: it’s neat. For a couple of tunes, In Dreams is pretty neat. But it’s padded out to 65 minutes with an opening overture that featured the human players onstage whisking through a prissy instrumental medley of Orbison hits, a couple of video interludes featuring people like Bono and the late Tom Petty talking about what a great singer and a great guy Orbison was, and a run at “Ooby Dooby” towards the end where the two female singers who had been lending backup harmonies to a dead man all evening long finally got to take the lead and, man, 65 minutes felt like an eternity on Sunday. The arrangements are far too stiff to have anything to do with early rock ’n’ roll, too. It was like watching a Boston Pops tribute to Orbison.
Where this does make sense is arguably where In Dreams is headed — for a residency at the Andy Williams Moon River Theatre in Branson, Mo. As a distraction folded into many other distractions on your holiday, it’s probably fine — although ideally you’d catch it in chunks as it ran on endless loop in Las Vegas, wandering in and out as you saw fit after downing free cocktails and losing at the blackjack table. I wouldn’t set aside a night with a hologram again.