Jeez - were the 1970s really like this? The years roll past, fashions mutate, people move on - but nobody got around to telling the Three Degrees. So here they are again, the world's (officially) longest-running female trio - their boast, by the way - still louchely wiggling their tushes, flashing those spearmint smiles.
The hits you know already - though only, perhaps, at a subconscious level; When Will I See You Again, Woman in Love, Take Good Care of Your- self. Songs that, like some torpid living fossil blindly shifting through the protean muck, refuse to do the decent thing and die. The rest, to judge by this performance, are pure, 100 per cent proof vaudeville. The Three Degrees seem to inhabit an alternative bubble-gum universe where the last 25 years never happened; an aura of unreality shimmers around them as they lather us in huge, foamy splashes of harmony.
That's not to say that the proceedings are utterly devoid of entertainment. They do a neat line in between-song banter - sure, it's easy to pick on a guy in the front row and make him squirm for laughs - but hey, it's still funny. And these ladies are ruthless crowd-baiters, mercilessly haranguing a string of innocent husband/ boyfriend types who, no doubt, are still trying to figure out why they came to the concert in the first place.
And the costumes are nice; bright disco showband numbers which straddle Vegas camp and costumer party absurdity. If you squint, the three ladies resemble giant, gyrating parrots - slightly scary. Their headgear is so bright you suspect you might go blind if you stared too long. Oh, and they really can sing, too - towering, 10-storey high vocals.
Everything is pleasantly bland, then - certainly it's hard to be actually offended by what the Three Degrees do. Rather, you feel oddly unmoved, apathetic. Bored is the word, I suppose.
