Robbie Williams
Croke Park, Dublin
★★★★★
On Saturday night Robbie Williams returns to Croke Park, standing before 80,000 people and demanding to be loved. You could say that’s what every concert is, but only the greatest performers do it with such naked honesty.
The evening opens with a tongue-in-cheek prelude: a film reflecting on the irreplaceable role of entertainers in the age of artificial intelligence, punctuated by deepfake tributes from Elvia Presley, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. Seconds later Williams bursts out in a white spaceman suit and aviators, tearing into Rocket as the stadium erupts. He scales a towering frame while dancers wave RW flags, then floats down.
The spectacle never slackens. It is, as he says, his “love letter to entertainment”, and he pulls out every trick. The outfit changes come relentlessly: astronaut to diamanté red tracksuit to flamingo-pink puffs to hot-pink suit and, finally, to a white rhinestone Elvis homage. Around him dancers flicker from towering Egyptian goddesses to flappers to nymphs to black-feathered peacocks.
The choreography and setlist are calibrated perfectly to ensure no lull, no dead air. The challenge of a two-hour set is that Williams doesn’t have enough hits to fill it, but he finds inventive solutions, drawing the crowd into raucous singalongs of YMCA and Islands in the Stream, just brief enough to dodge copyright while keeping the energy high.
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His banter is perfectly pitched: self-deprecating, needy, mischievous yet irresistibly charming. “Thank you for being here. It would be really weird if you weren’t, and very expensive for me and my family,” he quips. Above all he shows an acute awareness of who he is and who the audience expects. “I’m not cool. I’ve never been cool. Nobody has ever said, ‘That Robbie Williams, he’s so mysterious,’” he says before tearing into New York, New York, an anthem of triumphant uncoolness.
Two moments stand out. In one Williams banters with a projected deepfake of his 17-year-old self, a reminder of the boy who only ever wanted to be famous. In another he delivers a soaring My Way, epic and richly tragic.
[ The Beatles, Paddy’s Wigwam and lesser-known ties between Dublin and LiverpoolOpens in new window ]
Williams gives everything and expects everything in return. He understands the implicit contract of showbiz, which is why the audience never feels shortchanged. At the finale, singing “I just wanna feel real love in a life ever after,” he sounds less like a star than a supplicant, pleading for the ecstatic adoration only a crowd can provide. Before leaving, he asks, “What am I going to do with all this love, once I have to go back to my hotel room and eat prawn-cocktail Pringles and watch Sky News?” The line lands with absolute sincerity.
He needs you, and in that need his narcissism becomes indistinguishable from generosity. He really puts on a show. Williams’s charisma rests on this sleight of hand: making the audience feel not that they are lucky to be there but that he is lucky they came.
