Or, as it’s billed on the tickets, 'An Evening with Rufus Wainwright and Kate & Anna McGarrigle'. Plus Kate’s daughter and Rufus’ sister, Martha Wainwright, and Anna’s daughter, Lily Lanken. Rufus and Martha’s father is Loudon Wainwright III – best known in the UK for successfully suing Robbie Williams for infringement of copyright over lyrics included on his “I’ve Been Expecting You” album – so in folk circles, this is truly an audience with the Canadian Royal Family.
As such, it’s a friendly affair, all warm in-joking and firm favourites. They open with a shakily harmonised “Heart Like A Wheel” (“Some say the heart is just like a wheel/ When you bend it you can’t mend it”), Kate & Anna’s song famously covered in the mid-’70s by then superstar Linda Ronstadt. The first-night nerves of the elder members show, but Rufus’ divinely swellegant voice fills any pauses. Thereafter the musicians – augmented by a displaced Bad Seeds-type on bass – disappear and reappear dependant upon the song. Everyone gets a solo – Martha offers the delightful post-Alanis "Bloody Motherf*cking Asshole" – and even though Rufus performs lead on less than ten songs, and offers just two tracks from current album “Want One” (“Pretty Things” and “Dinner At Eight”), it’s impossible not to enjoy the show.
After an anecdote about being taken by Loudon to see the movie “Annie” on a trip to New York (he and Kate divorced when their son was a toddler) – Rufus recounts how his mother enticingly told him: “You know, sometimes they let boys play Annie on Broadway…” – there’s party-piece “Over The Rainbow”. After an avalanche of requests for her son’s unreleased new live anthem, Kate politely puts the audience straight, so to speak; “There’ll be no “Gay Messiah” tonight.” Rufus adds archly: “This is a family show!” ("Little Briton" David Walliams makes a conspicuous appearance in the audience in a white linen summer suit, befitting his rep as the UK’s camp icon du jour.)
Special guests Linda Thompson (wife of Britfolk icon Richard) and her son Teddy appear briefly, Teddy adding guitar and vocals to Rufus and Martha’s version of love song "One Man Guy". The extended McGarrigle clan deliver an unrehearsed, acappella and utterly charming “Goodnight Sweetheart” as an encore – all nerves now banished, it’s bewitching.
While Kate and Martha share a similarly sweet tone, somewhere between Dolly Parton and Tanya Donelly, Rufus’ magnificent instrument (ahem) is akin to an insouciant Thom Yorke with a theatrical flourish. It is undeniably one of the great contemporary voices, and it’s never sounded better than tonight, when it boomed from the bosom of his impossibly talented family.
