Michael Flatley plays the Flute!!

A couple of Friday nights ago Sab and I made our way down to the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre to see world renowned Irish dancer and love making machine (if you believe the stories) Michael Flatley and his new blockbuster show “Celtic Tiger.”

Having seen the shugga-dugging (my term for Irish dancing as in the sound the shoes make on the stage) only on TV I was excited to see it live. Sure it isn’t the extravaganza of “Riverdance” but the Flats man was “Lord of the Dance” in his heyday and all Sab and I wanted to see 2 hours of shugga-duggin with the Flats man going around in a Pat Cash inspired headband front and centre.

The venue was rubbish for starters. It felt as if you were watching a performance in a big shed and being the economic powerhouses that Sab and I are, we sat in the second last row. Thank God we had a big screen though it wasn’t needed as even from as far back as we were, Mickey boy was sucking the gut in and to me was definelty in his “fat Elvis” period of the career.

Here’s an interesting stat. Michael Flatley nearly spent 33 percent of his stage time (all in all about 20-25 mins out of 120) playing the flute. Now this is not what shugga-dugging is supposed to be. I didn’t spend my cash to see him play the flute! Here he was fluting away like he was playing something off an old K-Tel record where all we wanted to see was dancing. Granted there were parts of the show were the dancing was brilliant by the cast and the part where all the female dancers were wearing skimpy costumes made me lament not paying 800 bucks to get a closer view but all in all the show made no sence.

For starters its called “Celtic Tiger.” I know there were no tigers in Ireland so Sab and I thought it was a nickname for the exodus of Irish to America over the years. Nope, Flats thought that naming a new stage show after a boom in the Irish economy in the 90’s was a great idea.

Then there was the show itself. The first half of the show was basically a history is Ireland. It had great moments such as when the English came to town and burned the place up and there were moments where the girls were dressed like butterflies for whatever god forsaken reason. The second half of the show was the biggest propaganda machine I’ve seen since “Triumph of the Will” It was so American that it has no continuity from the first half of the show. There were big American flags, a stewardess stripping and ending up in an American bikini (once again...I lament) and it felt wrong. Sitting there reminded me of the time Sab and I saw the Harlem Globetrotters and thinking “I can’t wait for this to be over so we can go.”

Finally there was Flats himself. As I said he’s in his Fat Elvis period and he was barely on stage and yeah he’s got a few moves left below the hips but he just looked like an overweight boxer the way he moved around the stage. He was a real disappointment and it only made me want to go out and see “Riverdance” some time soon.