Bono: Stories of Surrender review – megastar tries out humility

The stadium-conquering stone superstar Bono finds a smaller arena than accustomed for this much intimate and overmuch acclaimed “quarter-man” show, performed solo without his U2 bandmates Adam Clayton, David “The Edge” Evans and Larry Mullen Jr and filmed unrecorded connected signifier astatine New York’s Beacon theatre successful 2023 by Andrew Dominik. It’s a confident, often engaging premix of euphony and no-frills theatrical performance, with Bono often coming crossed similar immoderate forgotten quality that Samuel Beckett created but past suppressed owed to undue levels of rock’n’roll pizzazz.

Bono delivers anecdotes from his autobiography Surrender, starting with his caller bosom scare and going backmost to his Dublin childhood, his philharmonic breakthrough to planetary fame, his post-Live Aid foundation enactment connected poorness and famine alleviation (though nary sermon connected the question of whether Live Aid was a bully thing), and his spiritual religion which evidently morphed from a extremist Christianity successful his teen years to a much wide-embracing spirituality; it is each interspersed with “unplugged” versions of U2 standards accompanied by harp and cello.

It’s a show delivered from the pulpit to the fanbase choir of course, but Bono is surely moving hard to find a caller registry of humility successful his nationalist persona – though this colossally palmy fig volition ever beryllium alert that helium has a batch to beryllium un-humble about. However, helium is opening up astir 2 precise important figures successful his life: his parent and father, Iris and Bob Hewson, and Bono has a almighty communicative to archer astir his narration with them. Iris collapsed and died astatine her ain father’s ceremonial erstwhile Bono was conscionable 14, and helium and his member Norman were the close-up witnesses to his father’s retreat into daze and aggravated melancholy; Bob ne'er mentioned Iris again, and his symptom lone recovered an outlet successful his emotion of classical music, with Bono internalising this silence.

Bono himself rehearsed with U2 successful the aboriginal days successful a gathering adjacent to the cemetery wherever Iris was buried and ne'er visited her sedate there. Added to which, Bob had a pugnacious clip coming to presumption with the information that his lad was a immense prima and the 2 settled into a barbed and bantering narration which precluded admitting that they loved each other, and which had a precise un-Hollywood ending astatine Bob’s deathbed. (I was atrocious that the movie didn’t see the saccharine anecdote Bono has repeated successful chatshows, that erstwhile Bob came backstage aft a U2 megashow, the lone mode helium could find to congratulate his son’s show was to accidental that it was precise “professional”.)

As for the different important radical successful Bono’s beingness – his bandmates and his woman Alison whom helium joined astatine the property of 21 - his narration with them is (understandably) not explored onstage successful the aforesaid detail. Even so, impressively, Bono does his champion to descend from stone deity to stone human.