Last weekend I went to see Giovanni Pernice’s show, The Last Dance. Short version: there’s some good dancing. Shortest version: you need to fancy Gio to really enjoy the show.

There’s nothing wrong with that. For instance, I know full well that you’re reading this because I am roguishly handsome. (Look, there’s a reason there’s no photo on this blog.) But I keep thinking of something Pernice did that was entirely right and correct, yet to me was also entirely wrong and wrongerer.

Follow. He opened with a speech about us, his great audience. Basically it was about him and how much we loved him. He was right because in that room, he was right. Pretty much. I figure the attendance was 90% women and 10% plus-ones.

He knows who he attracts, he plays up to their expectations very well. Yet it seemed so wrong to me that it was annoying.

I mean, I suppose strictly speaking you are my audience now as you read this. But it isn’t like that. This is you and me having a chat, even if I do seem to be doing most of the talking. What can I say, I’m clearly a man.

For all the time that you’re reading this, I am in your head and I cannot, just cannot express how great that feels. All the things you’ve got to do, all the worries, all the pleasures, all the constant thinking, and for these moments, I’m in that mix. My mind to your mind. Staggering. I can’t conceive why I’d be remembered when I’ve left a room, so to occupy space in your brain, it’s exciting.

To me, though, you will never read something I’ve written just because I’ve written it, or at the very most you might give the start a go if you’ve liked something else of mine that you’ve read, but you’re not going to stick around if you’re bored. So even here when you’re being very quiet, this is you and me.

Actually, Gio spoke about this, in a way. He spoke quite often about how it is his audience’s support that lets him do this work he loves. He spoke more often about how good it was to see full houses. (This one wasn’t close to full. Actually, two people near me skipped town during the interval.) But somehow the effect was that he is a star deigning to talk to the little people.

Like I say, he knows his audience and he really does give them what they want. As we were leaving, people around me were swooning. (If you’re thinking they could have been swooning about me, you are in a sarcastic mood today.)

I didn’t swoon so much, and I don’t dance, so my only specific criticism of the show could be that it overtly displayed its structure. Rather than carrying us from moment to moment, beat to beat, we were repeatedly told the scaffolding. Pernice would say things like “This is the part of the show where we…” or “That was about X, this is Y”. Or at one point, he said “I thought a lot about what song to play at this point.” I would hope you did, I can’t see any earthly reason why you shouldn’t.

And of course toward the end he explained that “this is the finale”. Curiously, the only part that wasn’t signposted was the interval.

Mind you, saying this stuff aloud does save you having to think of a seamless structure that smoothly carries you and your audience to the end. As it is, I’ve got to find a finish now and all I can think of is what in the world did I mean by “wrongerer”?