Gig review: Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve at Leeds City Varieties

“They tell me that we are walking in the footsteps on the planks beneath our feet which were trod by Marie Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Carson, Doddy and all those vaudevillians that came before us,” says Elvis Costello, stood beneath the proscenium arch of one of the UK’s last remaining music halls from the Victorian era, observing its plush red and gold surroundings.

Such an intimate venue steeped in history seems the perfect setting for a two-man show intended to commemorate Costello’s 50 years in the music business with choice moments from his extensive songbook, interspersed with quips and anecdotes from his past.

For the most part, this 90-minute performance – the second of four that he’s playing across two nights at Leeds City Varieties – is engaging and entertaining.

The besuited and behatted singer-songwriter, who turned 70 last month, oozes charisma and sharp intelligence and the telepathic understanding he seems to share with long-time musical foil Steve Nieve, here on piano and organ, leads to flashes of brilliance.

However, the strain of playing two shows in one night is also evident in Costello’s voice, which at times results in the dense, wordy lyrics of songs such as Less Than Zero and Beyond Belief sounding more than a little croaky and garbled.

Opening number Watching The Detectives, one of his most familiar songs, is here reimagined as a swampy, Cajun-type number with dub reggae interludes. A snarling Watch Your Step is followed by the unreleased rockabilly track My Baby Just Squeals (You Heal), then Costello straps on his “Jimmy Reed guitar” – the gritty-sounding Kay Thin Twin K-161 – for the evocative Country Darkness.

The bilious The Man You You Love To Hate is prefaced by a memory of his mother’s less-than-thrilled reaction to being asked if the family was related to the wrestler Mick McManus, with whom they (almost) shared a surname, while an aside about doing a private speaking engagement at the Brudenell Social Club to launch his 2015 memoir prompts Costello into some fond recollections of carrying his father Ross MacManus’s trumpet to working men’s club gigs with Joe Loss.

Before a tender Dio come ti amo/ Almost Blue, the singer jokingly recalls his dad being asked “at an age that certain gentlemen reach where they lose all decorum” how he came to be fluent in Spanish and he replied ‘In bed’. “My mother didn’t speak a word of Spanish,” Costello notes wryly.

A standing ovation greets A Face in the Crowd, a full-blooded extract from an as-yet-to-be-staged Costello musical on which he plays piano, and he encourages the audience to join in the chorus of God’s Comic, a deadpan vision of the afterlife as envisaged by a deceased comedian.

In the final stretch, Nieve comes into his own with some virtuoso keyboard trills during Man Out of Time and boogie woogie vamps in Mystery Dance. As a surprise, he even sings the second verse of a mighty rendition of Nick Lowe’s (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding and accompanies Costello on accordion in A Good Year For The Roses.

As the audience rise to their feet for a second time, the pair beam together, comrades in arms. Theirs is a special partnership and it’s well worthy of this celebration.

Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve play two more gigs at Leeds City Varieties tonight at 7pm and 9pm.