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An Evening With David Hasselhoff Live – Pleasance Grand 


3 stars
The mock-up of the Berlin Wall painted with a German flag over-laden 
with peace symbols onstage is the perfect embodiment of East-West 
unification, especially when two dancing girls and a man in a sparkly 
1980s jacket kick their way through the bricks that are holding it all 
together. By this time the beach-balls bouncing around the auditorium 
and the mass onstage Conga has already ensnared a room packed with 
willing worshippers.

But this isn't some iconoclastic melding of east European avant-gardism 
and pop culture appropriating post-modernism. This is TV's best known 
former lifeguard's bombastic solo show, and we are all culpable. 
Opening with a big-screen montage of his greatest hits, Hasselhoff 
enters from the back of the auditorium singing a rat pack style 
rendition of Nina Simone's Feeling Good, before strutting his way to 
the stage for a tea-time diversion of taking stock, Hoff-style.

What this means is a loose-knit narrative from Knight Rider to Baywatch 
to saving the western world. Somehow fed into this are lounge-bar 
versions of Copacabana, You Can Keep Your Hat On, complete with shower 
scene with a couple of blondes in shadow, some out-takes from his shows 
and the real reason behind Baywatch's much imitated slow-motion 
sequences revealed.

There's nothing subtle in the Hoff's self-deprecatory show-man schtick, 
which starts at fever pitch and just keeps on building. Just when you 
think things can't get any more absurd, he comes on sporting a kilt to 
finish the show with a jaw-dropping version of The Proclaimers 500 
Miles. That was the Hoff. He came, he sang, he conquered. Showbiz will 
never be the same again. Until Aug 27th.


The Herald, August 24th 2012

ends

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