Here’s the deal. You can have the full bells-and-whistles Nick & the Bad Seeds production with all its attendant kinetics and dynamics, staged in a high-ceilinged cow palace or festival tent, or you can take your chances on the more roughshod and ragged-gloried variety up close and in your face in Vicar St, which isn’t nearly as slick but affords plenty of rarified moments.
A Night With Nick Cave was at least two-parts part spoken word event, featuring hefty extracts from The Death of Bunny Munro set against back projection and soundscapes generated by Warren Ellis in full-on Mad Professor mode, plus a requests-taken musical policy (bespoke piano balladry juxtaposed with jerry-built blues) and a sort of ad-hoc Q&A session interspersed throughout. The latter component generated a few belly laughs (one wag requested ‘Spinning Around’), although the Long Fellow seemed to tire of it as well-framed questions degenerated into cattle-calls. Next time a steward with a radio mic might enforce a little more, y’know, decorum.
The readings were the most intriguing part. Cave did not shirk from plumbing the most unwholesome depths of Bunnyworld, and the concluding section wherein the protagonist has congress with an OD-ing waif was greeted with something like stunned silence. (The following night, The View regulars were treated to the unlikely sight of Joe Duffy vigorously defending the book against Fintan O’Toole and Cait O’Riordan – this world gets weirder by the day.)
The rest of the show was fast and loose. A stripped down ‘Tupelo’ was on fire; ‘Red Right Hand’ sounded like it was being murdered by Grafton St buskers; ‘The Mercy Seat’ was sublime. You spin the wheel and you take your chances, but on balance I reckon everyone came out ahead.