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Panic over. The show will go on. The show, indeed, did go on. Emma Bunton’s ankle – seen only four days ago, still attached to its owner, but encased in stretch bandage – withstood the rigours of the opening night of their UK tour.
Like the lovechild of Lazarus and Barbie, she rose alongside the other four Spice Girls through dry ice on a hydraulic podium – as Spice Up Your Life thundered up to the rafters. The bandage was gone, replaced by the sort of heels that cause those sorts of injuries in the first place.
To what exactly does one attribute such a return to fitness? The miracles of modern medicine? A PR stunt designed to heighten a sense of having overcome all odds to stage a triumphant return? Girl Power?
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They would probably claim the latter. After all, if it worked for them in the 90s, why shouldn’t it work all over again? Indeed, it took all of one song before Geri Halliwell shrieked, “Are you ready for some GIRL POWER?!” An audience comprising 86 per cent hen night, 14 per cent designated drivers diligently shrieked back.
If the proposition sounded as strange in its way as the notion of Tony Blair addressing the next Labour Party conference by shouting, “Are you ready for some NEW LABOUR?!” then few people eager to get the most from their £75 tickets stopped to ponder the incongruity.
Much harder to ignore though, were the appallingly lame production values of the show. You would think that hydraulic podiums had just been invented, such was the frequency with which the quintet emerged and departed on them. It might not have mattered if many of their apparently best-loved hits had dated any better. But pop has changed since the Spice Girls imperial years. Anyone going to see Take That’s current tour is given a perpetually shifting array of backdrops, routines and costume changes to detract from their shoddier moments.
In a post-Girls Aloud, post-Britney era, limp, lacklustre jingles like 2 Become 1 and Stop could have also done with some genuine spectacle to detract from just how little musical meat there is to be found on those bones. Unlike, say, Kylie’s New Year comeback or Gwen Stefani’s smart, sleek, funny recent shows, a basic lack of imagination pervaded everything: the obligatory Chicago-style treatment of an old song (Move Over), the medley of over-familiar disco hits (We Are Family/That’s The Way I Like It/Celebration), the children’s choir (Mama).
Rather like this arena in the days when it was still the Millennium Dome, it seemed less a coherent, intelligent presentation of decent ideas than a big space that needed filling up with something, anything.
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Because they haven’t collectively scored enough hits to fill an entire show, solo spots were necessary. Whilst other Spices used theirs to raise the profiles of their flagging solo careers (short of selling her flop album in the foyer, Mel C couldn’t have put more effort into her bit) Posh Spice used her moment to self-referentially sashay along the catwalk to a pack of pretend photographers. Still it did at least show that she’s touchingly aware of her limitations – and a good job too given that her line on Let Love Lead The Way was delivered with such avant garde atonality that it appeared to break the very autotune software designed to stop such things happening.
Of course, in Spiceworld, the usual rules of commerce and music – quality control, the faintest ability to sing, value for money – don’t apply. Consequently, nothing that the other four did elicited as much of a cheer as the very few things that the gold-attired Posh did. If that rankles with the others, then they weren’t about to tell us.
After an unctuously protracted group hug and the inevitable encore of Wannabe they left as they came – with Spice Up Your Life and off to a noise comprising 86 per cent cheering and 14 per cent impatient jangling of car keys.
Tour continues December 18 (sold out), Jan 2-22, O2 Arena; 23-24