Motorpoint Arena

A Star is Born This Way a stage show performed by Donna Marie as a tribute to Lady Gaga, covering all of Lady Gaga’s hits as well as some of the songs from the film “A Star is Born”.

Covering an artiste such as Lady Gaga is always going to be an enormous task, both vocally and visually Lady Gaga is a unique talent. Thankfully Donna Marie, was able to bring some of that magic to Nottingham’s Motorpoint Arena.

After going through the tedious task of queuing up to be searched, we were then directed to our seats. For this performance the stage had been moved to the far end of the arena, to create a more intimate feel.

The opening of the show tried to replicate the start of the film “A Star Is Born” by having a male singer/guitarist (Adam Kelbie) perform “Black Eyes” just like in the film. From this point on Adam and the lady Gaga impersonator Donna Marie covered most of the tracks from the film. However, the audience only really burst into life during the more popular hits from the film such as “Shallow” and “I’ll Never Love Again”.

Before Donna Marie returned for the second half of the show, there was a guest vocalist who had won a competition to sing to the audience, Charlotte Pearce from Stoke on Trent was given ten minutes to impress the crowd with her vocal talent. Her cover of Anastacia’s “Left Outside Alone” was certainly a great way to demonstrate her vocal prowess. Hopefully Charlotte might go on to be signed and record some material.

Donna Marie returned for the second half of the show, this part of the show was geared towards the megahits that Lady Gaga has recorded. Donna managed to do an impressive job of entertaining the audience with renditions of hits such as “Born This Way”, “Poker Face”, and “Bad Romance”. The audience appeared to react better to the songs during this part of the show than the first half.

My only criticism about this show were the gap fillers in between songs whilst Donna Marie was changing into different costumes, it just lost the flow of the show at times. But if you see some of the costumes it is easy to understand why those gap fillers were necessary.

Donna Marie is a tribute act worth going to see live, a good entertaining evening with incredible music.

Review by Luke Seagrave