WCXX

Her audacity in choosing the Mecca of Argyll Street for her London debut was vindicated time and again as her two-hour show unfolded in a quite bewildering display of pyrotechnics, mime, magic and dance.

There were moments when the spectacle overwhelmed the compositions with irrelevance, but Miss Bush found the perfect counterpoint by taking to the piano and to her accompaniment gently singing The Eyes, Feel it and The Kick Inside.

Whether she could sustain a complete programme thus is doubtful; for now she has struck a balance between the vivid and the simple, and it is devastatingly effective.

At the opposite end of the scale are songs such as Violin, Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, and Kite, all delivered with immense power and danced with considerable polish by the sinuous Miss Bush, Stewart Arnold and Gary Hurst.

The illusionist, Simon Drake, made a brilliant contribution to In Search of Peter Pan, and the entire team made James and the Cold Gun an alarmingly strong, Sam Peckinpah-like finale, with Kate Bush toting a shotgun in convincing style. .

The show is divided, somewhat pretentiously and disruptively, into three acts; the opening number Moving last night needed infinitely more depth. But these were minor blemishes on a programme which bore dazzling testimony to a remarkable talent, evidently intense rehearsal and technological know-how. And all this from a girl of 20 – it beggars belief.

LOOK: KATE BUSH'S CAREER IN PICTURES