Donald Glover opens with a visual sleight of hand. A light show bounces off a curtain, which dramatically drops to reveal an empty stage. Glover has instead appeared in the middle of the audience, at the end of a catwalk. To some observers at least, that would seem perfectly apt. The show ostensibly forms part of his musical alter ego Childish Gambino’s farewell – “Boo?” he asks quizzically, when the crowd express displeasure at his announcement that this is “the very last Childish Gambino tour” – and the retirement itself looks a little like a sleight of hand. Glover has been talking about it for two years, and yet, here he still is, clad in the same outfit he wore in last year’s game-changing This Is America video, debuting new material, with commentators confused as to whether he’s intending on quitting music entirely or simply planning on releasing more under a different name.
He doesn’t give any clues as to his future intentions tonight, but if this is Glover bowing out, he’s doing it in style. By arena standards, the show is stark: a quartet of backing dancers appear intermittently and, at one point, a guitarist comes on stage to take a solo, but the rest of the time, it is only Glover up there.
Indeed, it sometimes feels stark to the point of seeming risky. The show opens with him standing still, head bowed, for three minutes while a gospel track plays; he performs Terrified bathed in lighting so muted that he is more or less invisible. But he makes the austere setting work. With nothing to look at but him, his performance shifts from bug-eyed and wildly kinetic to compellingly idiosyncratic. He drops to his knees and sings Riot on all fours, then vanishes from the stage, a camera following him. He reappears, singing, in the aisle of one of the venue’s stands. When his suggestion that people put their phones down goes unheeded, he takes to suggesting they shoot in landscape rather than portrait.
The music also lurches around thrillingly. From the pop-soul of Summertime Magic to the punch of Worldstar to Boogieman’s Funkadelic-indebted groove. The loudest cheers are reserved for This Is America: an odd song to turn into a party-hard set-closer complete with dancers doing the splits, but, like the rest of the show, Glover somehow pulls it off. His talent is more certain than his future.
