It’s been 2 years since Tassie has been dazzled by the sequinned, striped gowned and big ,bold, blonde mane of Dusty Springfield tribute artist Sheena Crouch. Sheena, as her alias Dusty, is certainly not one to ‘crouch’ away in the shadows instead preferring to take her place in the stage light of the Theatre Royal with her new show ‘Dusty and Tom’. This time we get to see how Dusty reacts when joined on stage by the sexy Mr Tom Jones played by Jacques Renay.
Since she has been away Sheena has been performing on the ‘Rock the boat’ cruises which has been made up of a number of tribute artists including a tribute Chubby Checker who, Sheena tells me, took a liking to the delightful Miss Dusty! However, away from the water Sheena is keen to get back on the road touring and it seems Tassie will be a favourite place after friends of Sheenas recently moved over here. An Adelaide girl now living in Sydney, Sheena talks about the cosmopolitan nature of a lot of Australian cities and how she finds Tassie so refreshing in that it has retained its original appearance to a degree ,with lots of the heritage buildings still standing. She is excited about getting back to Salamanca for some new trinkets and bling (although she doesn’t really need it) for Dusty.
Having Tom Jones along will be a change from her previous tour with the much more strait laced Cliff Richard, but as Sheena says Tom and Dusty would have a lot more in common, whereas the other concept show was about what would have been if Dusty and Cliff had performed together, which they never did, Dusty and Tom did perform together and there was much in common with both having a love of the big bands and being practitioners of soul music.
An interesting piece of trivia Sheena relates to me is the almost supernatural synchronisity revolving around Dusty’s first great hit, ‘I only want to be with you’, which incidentally has its 50th anniversary this year and is celebrated in this tribute show. When Dusty sang it, it made no 4 on the UK charts, some years later the ‘Bay City Rollers’ also took it to no 4 on the UK charts and then ‘The Tourists’ with Annie Lennox again took it to no 4. After a lapse of years Samantha Fox also charted with the song, this time taking it to no 16 which is divisable by 4!
Dusty and Tom will be performing at the Theatre Royal on Saturday, 2nd March at 8:00pm and will be returning in April to tour Launceston and Burnie.
Paula Xiberras
