Take That have never been shy when it comes to repackaging their past. In 2018, they followed two official best-of collections with Odyssey, a Stuart Price-produced curio in which they “re-imagined” their greatest hits. Around the same time, band captain Gary Barlow – now overseeing just two teammates, Mark Owen and Howard Donald – was brutally honest about the band’s standing as a legacy act more focused on ticket sales than streams. “Even if [the album is] a flop, we’re still going to go on tour next year and play to 600,000 people.”
Fast forward eight years and the band have sidestepped the studio time and are instead lightly “re-imagining” an entire old tour. And not just any tour. When it first played stadiums in summer 2009, Take That Presents The Circus became the fastest selling jaunt in UK history, making more than £40m in profit. Without an obvious anniversary peg, on paper this unusual reboot of a widely seen show (even the DVD release broke sales records) has the feel of profit-obsessed businessmen stuck in a creative cul-de-sac.
