The long-awaited first rehearsals of the five automatic finalists continued today with Josh Dubovie on stage for the United Kingdom.
Josh had come to Oslo the long way, by boat, and had only reached his hotel at 2 o’ clock this morning. A large contingent of UK press were in the arena to cheer him on.
First we got a look at the stage, and the stage hands had their work cut out to assemble it in time. It’s a long series of steps with the highest point in the middle. Josh starts the song in a niche underneath the central step before emerging to move around the stage. For the second verse he goes up and down them, past his three female backing singers. The said backing singers are in little black dresses with long flowing white trains behind them. The wind machine picks up these trains so the flow backwards.
He has a very powerful voice for someone of his age, and he’s able to sell this song well. However, there are some areas of the song towards the end where his vocal sounds a little ropey. This will need considerable work, but he has a second rehearsal tomorrow, and then the dress rehearsals on Friday and Saturday.
It doesn’t deserve to do badly, and I’m being optimistic that he can just tweak his performance for rehearsal tomorrow.
