It’s Saturday night. The people are out. The Opera House in Wellington’s CBD is full of enthusiastic music lovers, as Night Fever prepares to take us on a superb musical tribute to the Bee Gees, produced by Showtime New Zealand and producer/director Johnny Van Grinsven.

It’s proving to be quite a night of emotional complexity, as the band and it’s frontmen – ‘Barry, Maurice, and Robin’, take the stage. As hit after hit is delivered, it becomes clear that this group of talented musicians and vocalists are here to give their audience exactly what they promised: Bee Gees music. And they do it so well. It’s as if they inhabit their characters inner worlds.

In no particular order we are privy to 60s pop ballads, sultry 70s ballads, and the disco dance numbers we all remember. They play: ‘Jive Talkin’, ‘You Should Be Dancin’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘More Than a Woman’, ‘Night Fever’, ‘Tragedy’, ‘If I Can’t Have You’, ‘To Love Somebody’, ‘Immortality’, ‘Guilty’ and my personal favourite – Massachusetts. The list goes on. This is the real deal. 

To add another dimension to the experience, video images of the Bee Gees are projected onto the back wall of the stage. If you focus on these, and listen to the music, you are simply transported to another place, another time. I’m surrounded by waves of laughter, chatter and applause as people reminisce about what they were doing when ‘that came out’. Wagers are being set as people try to second guess what hit will be played next. Now, they’re on their feet, dancing.

This group, Night Fever, is putting the music of the Bee Gees under a microscope, and the outcome is nothing less than a present-day masterpiece. Every now and again a show comes along that puts a smile on your face that you can’t get rid of – this is one of those shows.  

We are not disappointed in any way, after two hours of undeniable fun, the memory of the Bee Gees and their music is definitely ‘Stayin’ Alive’. 

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