“It’s been about 25 years since I stood on this stage,”
since Shania Twain, not long after the kickoff to her set Sunday night at the Hollywood
Bowl. She had that figured about right — the calendar shows she last played
America’s most favored amphitheater on May 6, 1999. That was a few weeks shy of
the moment that her signature song among all signature songs, “Man! I Feel Like
a Woman!,” peaked on the charts. When she pulled it out as her inevitable final encore number
Saturday, it still felt like it was cresting. It’s a song that may
never have truly peaked until all the generations represented at the Bowl this
Memorial Day weekend have passed away and/or the day the prerogative to have a
little fun has been codified into the criminal as a felony. For as long as
there are women, and gay men, and straight men relaxed with themselves enough
to buy “Let’s go, girls” T-shirt and diode-blinking pink cowboy hats, Twain
will own rights to the ultimate ladies’ night anthem, just as surely as she
owns the federal trademark on exclamation points. (She does, doesn’t she?)
Twain’s Bowl date came about a month into a North American tour
that is her first since an arena outing that wrapped up five years ago In the
interim, she’s had another Las Vegas residency (pandemic-interrupted and then
completed late last year) at Zappos, along with a new album, “Queen of Me,”
which came out in February. Residencies are of course a dime a dozen nowadays,
and said album disappeared from the charts almost as quickly as it was
released, marking Twain as a mortal subject to the same passages of time as
anyone else — in stark contrast to the way she was received at the Bowl, where
immutable goddess status manifested itself in a sold-out show and resale
tickets in the hours leading up going for a minimum $300 for the upper
nosebleed/ganja seats. (Anyone who couldn’t afford the secondary prices for the
Bowl still has a much more affordable shot at seeing Twain a couple hours
eastward at the Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs this Wednesday.) Twain did her
best to live up to those expectations and present as a Marvel-level immortal
Saturday, visually, anyway, although her between-song chatter always breaks the
illusion by having her sound like a Normal Lady, not demigoddess. (It is a
contrast her audience is willing to live with and embrace.) This touring
production won’t set any records or break any molds for being the most
elaborate show on earth, nor does it need to be, when Twain is her own ongoing
special effect, and a set of stairs and single giant LED screen will suffice as
set design. There is one giant prop that appears early in the show: a gigantic
faux motorcycle that looks like something off a vintage Meat Loaf cover, partly
configured in the shape of a horse, to invoke the stallion that Twain used to
ride onto the stage at some point in her original Vegas residency in the early
2010s. She sits astride it — or lays astride it — for the length of a song
early on, and then for the rest of the show, there are some super-cheesy
electronic backdrops, like an animated cowboy saloon on fire, but really it’s
about sashes and heels and wigs from then on.
Comments