‘I’m in gay heaven’: A night with the (wannabe) Spice Girls – Sydney Morning Herald

Touring since 2017 in the UK and around the world, Wannabe promises to “turn back the clock 20 years” with classic performances of the group’s big hits as well as original arrangements and mega-mixes plus iconic dance routines and costumes.

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Though the show is predominantly a concert, there is a loosely stitched narrative that charts the group’s rise and fall, and the girls’ subsequent solo careers. Geri Halliwell’s cover of It’s Raining Men (performed by Irish singer and dancer Shannan Cairns) is the clear standout of the solo performances, with four shirtless “Spice Boy” dancers offering extra hens’ night-style entertainment.

There’s also a (quite odd) tribute paid to the era more generally. Before the performance of Holler, for example, Sporty Spice (played by Rhiannon Porter) asks the audience for “an absolutely massive cheer for the unbreakable Nokia 3210″. The girls stand before neon images of the phone, which was released right before the turn of the millennium, and joke about how easy things used to be before iPhones and Tinder.

With an arm raised before the crowd Kyte yells, “Holler if you used to play Snake!”

This kind of naked nostalgia for the ’90s has been cultivated through the internet over the past decade or more, and is increasingly spilling out (and being capitalised on) in the real world.

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Australia has recently hosted throwback concert series like “I Love the ’90s” and “Made in the ’90s” featuring acts like Vanilla Ice and Coolio. And, ahead of the 2019 So Pop festival (which also featured Eiffel 65 and Vengaboys), ’90s icons Aqua told this masthead they had “actually never been so hot and in-demand”.

While some Millennials will find it cringeworthy to make such bold attempts to recapture their youth (especially now there’s a whole younger generation mocking us for it), the cast insists there’s something special there, too.

“The other day we had women bring their children, and I found that really touching,” says Keri Rae, who plays Baby Spice. “They were doing all the Stop choreography – like, the kids knew it. The parents must have taught them… You know, the Spice Girls aren’t on TikTok.”

There are also regularly a number of people video calling their mums during Mama.

“The smiles that you see on people’s faces are just beautiful,” says actress Amelia Walker, who has recently joined the cast as Scary Spice. “I just feel like the women that come and watch have a sistership with you.”

As the crowd spills out the doors of the Tivoli on the last night of Wannabe’s Brisbane run, it’s hard to disagree. There’s a real sense of the rebellious frenzy the Spice Girls inspired in a generation of girls more than two decades prior. One younger woman tells her friend “that was the most random thing I’ve ever seen… but I had a great time” while another, a fair bit older and a lot drunker, very earnestly says: “That was the best night of my life.”

Seconds later, she inexplicably runs down the street and steals a traffic cone.

Wannabe: The Spice Girls Show is touring Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Shepparton, Melbourne and Adelaide this month. The writer’s flights and accommodation in Brisbane were covered by Wannabe’s local promoter, The Prestige Presents.