IT IS nearly 40 years since Elvis Presley died aged just 42, leaving a huge gap in the world of modern popular music, and to mark the anniversary The Stage Door invited Mike Nova to perform his award-winning tribute to the ‘King’ of rock & roll.

Split into five sections – the fifties, Elvis in the Army, the early sixties, the 1968 comeback concert, and finally the seventies, each section was introduced by Mike’s assistant who dressed in the appropriate fashion of the day as she read out facts and dates regarding Elvis’s career in the period concerned.

Then it was straight into the action as Mike rattled off all the familiar numbers dressed in Elvis attire for the period.

He was on the stage alone accompanied by backing tracks, but quickly built rapport with the audience who sang along out loud and swayed in their seats.

The intimate atmosphere of the Theatre Bar, holding around a 100 or so, engendered a night club atmosphere with the spotlight on Mike as he belted out the rocky numbers and crooned over the ballads.

Eyes closed or open this man WAS Elvis.

The black hair and sideburns, the quiff, the tanned face, open shirt, the costumes, the stage moves including the gyrating hips, and of course the voice.

The two hours whizzed by as Mike kept up the pace to the end.

The finale saw Mike sing the song that the hollogrammed Elvis ‘sang’ with Celine Dion in Las Vegas during her appearance there in the eighties.

Mike Nova’s performance was polished and entertaining without it becoming a parody.

Endymion.