With Antony Hegarty and the Metropole Orchestra in a fairytale forest #hf12

Antony Hegarty, with his pianist and the Metropole Orchestra the layered and emotionally charged show Cut the World away. He shows that it need not be an issue to present more of the same. Meanwhile, the audience imagines themselves in the fairytale forest, eating out of his hand.

This is not the first time that the androgynous child-man Antony is at the Holland Festival. Back in 2009, he gave a memorable concert in Carré, also with the Metropole Orkest, which sold out in no time. After some tidy announcements, Hegarty emerges to loud cheers. Dressed in a beige robe and black tunic, he looks like he has walked out of a nineteenth-century gothic novel.

The singer's emotionally carried voice and presentation are nothing new to audiences, but Hegarty shows that that is not a problem. More of the same is not a problem in his case. He is very good in voice, has a great range, and his timing is perfect. Antony and the Metropole Orchestra shoot from Johnson's classics through occasional shenanigans to new work.

After a tingling cover of Beyonce's Crazy in Love, with the bright green laser light turning the stage into an Efteling attraction, he takes a seat behind the piano. The fairy-tale atmosphere remains, and the woman with hip glasses behind me sobs loudly. That this atmosphere works so well, by the way, is also largely due to the orchestra, which is well attuned to Hegarty.

Antony makes a few false starts or forgets a bit of lyrics. This is charming because he then takes the opportunity to have a chat with the audience. He grumbles about budget cuts, asks if anything interesting happened in the Amsterdam city council and informs at length that he has heard that King Elizabeth loves horses.

The interludes sometimes last quite long. Especially his story about horses, which derails into a freestyle song about horses loving queens and vice versa. None of it matters, people are eating out of his hand.

Logically, the well-known numbers like Hope there's someone getting the most hands on. But Hegarty also garners critical acclaim with a song from The Life and Death of Marina Abramović , a show that is also showing at the Holland Festival and for which he wrote several songs. The song is even more heavily orchestrated than the rest, has even more emotional charge and comes across very well.

When it is time for the final applause, the audience almost immediately springs up as one. Antony and his must come back up to three times for a bow. And rightly so, it was a moving performance.