New Theatre Oxford
Thursday, 14 May 2026
Except.
It is actually Oxford, on a rainy Thursday night in May. “The feeling has gone, only you and I, it means nothing to me.” Yet, remarkably, across 90 minutes, it came to mean everything.
For the past few months, I’ve been feeling utterly lost. Suffocating personal circumstances, a bone-aching weariness of world events, the soul-sapping exhaustion of feeling adrift with no anchor point. Above it all, the one thing which usually keeps me going is music.
Unusually, even that was lost to me as well. I didn’t bother going to my previous gig for which I had a ticket. Absolutely no interest whatsoever. That’s when you know things are bad.
As I walked into the New Theatre Oxford, it literally felt as if I was carrying the weight of the universe. There was little by way of enthusiasm; I’d spent the money, the gig was on my doorstep, I guess I probably ought to make the effort. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. I knew the songs. I knew the history. But I certainly wasn’t ready for what emerged during the course of the evening.
A fella called Midge Ure stepped out of the shadows, sidled into the spotlight, put his musical arm around me, and slowly but inexorably brought me home.
The New Theatre Oxford is a glorious venue. Built in the early 1930s, it has three tiers and an impressively framed stage, which creates a weighty and expectant presence. The top tier was closed, but the rest of the theatre was packed. The audience are, largely, of a certain generation, shall we say! They arrive already knowing the words, already carrying their own versions of the stories about to be told and the intimate meanings they have for them.
Midge appears with three companions: a keyboard player who also handles bass guitar duties, a second keyboard player who is also a violinist and a drummer. They are dressed in white tops, one with a tie, whilst Midge is all in black. Despite the venue’s size, the production feels intimate. The lighting is restrained. This scene is not set to stage a lavish spectacle. This promises to be something else.
From the very first song, the something else announces itself with an assured insistence: story. Stories in the lyrics. Stories between and connecting the songs. Stories in the theatre, carried in by over 1000 people who have their own relationship with this music, their own version of the boy in the Wastelands lyric, listening to records which make him feel alive.
I’m snagged on a lyric from Accent on Youth I wasn’t expecting: “Please take my hand and let me breathe again / Young depressive tears.” The song is written from the perspective of youth, yet sung by a man of 72 in a room full of people who knew exactly what those tears feel like, whatever their age. The years collapse. The feeling remains. We know it. We feel it. The deep ache within.
It is not surprising the boy from Wastelands then makes an appearance. “The boy is listening to those records from the past / He wants to make them last / For they make him feel alive / They are the voices of the faces on the wall / He listens to them all / Hangs on every little tale they tell / Knows them all and their life stories / Shares their pain and shares their glories.”
The words seep into my consciousness, initially unnoticed. It takes a little while for their significance to make themselves felt. Almost with a start, I recognise him. Not some stranger. Not a distant friend. He’s singing about me! Wow. Looking wide-eyed around the theatre, I suspect I am not alone in experiencing this dawning realisation.
Midge’s voice is not entirely behaving itself tonight, but damn, he does a mighty fine job of battling with it. He also displays a gentle, self-deprecating warmth which comes to characterise the entire evening. There is a moment when he makes a gentle joke about the audience wanting to hear something they recognise – a nod to the new solo album just released and the material opening the show before the more familiar Ultravox and Visage catalogue arrives. It reminds me of something Steve Hackett does equally well: yes, yes, you’ll get the Genesis stuff, but first you’ll hear who I am and what I’m about. There’s a spirit of generosity in the recognition of the audience’s intent, alongside a certain measure of wistfulness.
But here’s the thing about his voice, which strikes me then and there. The fraying at the edges, the strain from giving everything night after night, performing on the road: it doesn’t matter, and it certainly doesn’t detract. If anything, I think it adds an immeasurable quality to the evening. What we are being treated to isn’t some kind of greatest hits show dressed up as a concert. What we are all witnessing and feeling across the evening is a man examining his life in public, carefully, honestly, without apology. A ‘seasoned’ voice which has done its time in the trenches, lived through all manner of trials and tribulations. A ‘knowing’ voice which has lived through so much. A perfect voice would have been wrong. Joyous and embracing imperfection is the truth which shines brightly, here, now.
Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again) arrives in austere blue light: three figures backlit, barely moving. Midge sings the central lyric with an almost painful fondness, grasping for something he knows is there, which should be there, but keeps slipping just beyond his reach. In another context, it might be about ageing, about memory, about loss. In this theatre, on this night, it was about everything that slips through our fingers. Everything we reach for and cannot hold. Everything we once held firm and close, drifting away. Lost.
Then we have Man of Two Worlds and the mood shifts again. The lostness remains, but something else now enters alongside it. “Breathing solitude, seeking confidence / A gift to me / Feeling spirits never far removed / Passing over me and I greet them with open arms.” The song speaks directly to the malaise of our time, the discord, the disconnection, the sense of being pulled and pushed in directions not of our choosing. And yet. Open arms. Not resistance. Not despair. Acceptance, and within acceptance, something which might just be close to peace.
Lament arrives. Unmistakable. Anticipated. Yet its opening notes send a chill through the theatre. It’s not long before the story of the evening continues: “And just as my eyes start seeing / After all the pain / The twist in my life starts healing / Just to twist again.” Life is relentless. Unceasing. Exhausting. “In moments of madness / Returns that softly sighing lament.” But don’t misunderstand what is going on here. This is not pessimism. Given the prevailing mood of our time, we are confronting an expression of honesty. Pain returns. Pain’s accompanying lament returns. And yet the return does not represent defeat. All it means is this is simply what it means to be alive. To feel. To hurt. To keep going anyway.
Reap the Wild Wind magnificently announces its arrival and something shifts in the atmosphere of the theatre. After the relentless honesty of Lament, a hand is extended. “Give me your hand, I’ll give you my friendship.” Simple. Unconditional. The invitation to stop fighting the current and simply trust it. Dance with the wind. Let it carry you. There are moments in an evening like this when a lyric lands not as a song but as direct address. This hit me exactly where it needed to.
And then Vienna. Of course. How could it be any other way? The song which opened this review, the feeling “this means nothing to me” arrives at last, and the theatre responds as one. Immediately. Viscerally. Completely. And here, at this most exposed and celebrated moment, is where his voice struggles most visibly. The irony is almost unbearable. The song everyone came for. The highest expectation in the room. The most audible imperfection of the evening. And it matters not one jot. The room carries him. We all carry him. Together. As one.
Hymn arrives like an arctic blast. The warmth of Vienna still hangs in the air, but the mood shifts, and above the jollity and catchiness of the tune, we are suddenly given something more discomforting altogether. The song is about cynicism, about exploitation, about entitlement. It is about everything this world has become. It names the corruptions, literal and metaphorical, with open-eyed unflinching honesty. Which means that when Fade to Grey follows, the colours drain, the world loses its brightness, the unremitting sameness of everything settles in. And then the understanding dawns. We are all fading. The world is fading with us. Age and wisdom are no guarantee and certainly provide no protection.
The evening turns with Dancing With Tears in My Eyes. The memories return, but something is changing. “Weeping for the memory of a life gone by… Living out a memory of a love that died.” This is a song about regret, but also about deep-seated longing, about the peculiar ache of wishing you could return to something now irretrievably gone. And yet. In this theatre, on this night, something else is happening at the same time. The tears are real. They are tears of recognition, of gratitude, of something approaching joy. A life well lived, with all its pain and all its glory, is still a life worth celebrating. The dancing and the tears are not in opposition. They are two sides of the same coin.
Everyone in the theatre is on their feet.
The encore gives us Yellow Pearl, joyous, defiant. Finally, we are treated to If I Was. However you look at it, the song exudes inspiration and aspiration. About the person you might have been, the life you might have lived, if circumstances had been different. You could presume a touch of melancholy. You would be wrong. Standing here, among these people, felt like a declaration – a promise. We can still dream. The road ahead may be shorter than the road behind. But it isn’t over. We can still reach for something.
“If I was…”. You can leave the sentence unfinished. You can complete as you wish. Either way is exactly right. The dreaming never stops.
I walked into the New Theatre feeling lost. I walked out carrying something I didn’t arrive with and certainly didn’t expect. Lament and the celebration are the same note, held together. They are what they are because they exist together, side by side, companions on our journey through life.
Midge Ure. 72. His voice is fraying at the edges. He sidled up, put his arm around 1000+ people, and sang us stories until we remembered who we were.
That’s enough. More than enough. It was something beautiful, and it brought tears to my eyes whilst dancing in the aisles.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Olé.
SETLIST
A Different View
Again We Love
Call of the Wild
Just Words
Accent on Youth
The Ascent
Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again)
Astradyne
Wastelands
Man of Two Worlds
Lament
Monster
Vienna
Reap the Wild Wind
Hymn
The Voice
Fade to Grey
Dancing With Tears in My Eyes
~ Encore
Yellow Pearl
If I Was
MUSICIANS
Midge Ure – Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards
Russell Field – Drums, Loops
Joseph O’Keefe – Synths, Violin
Cole Stacey – Bass, Synths
LINKS
Midge Ure – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | X | Instagram
