David Brighton’s Space Oddity brings Bowie to the Coach House on Halloween

The long-running Bowie show, with costume changes and note-for-note arrangements, plays San Juan Capistrano on Saturday, October 31.

Some people spend Halloween dressed as David Bowie. David Brighton has made a career of it. On Saturday, October 31, the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano has Space Oddity, Brighton's Bowie show, on its calendar at 8 p.m. On the one night a year when half the crowd may turn up in costume, the man on stage will be in one too.

The Coach House lists the Halloween date on its own schedule, and the venue's show pages for David Brighton's Space Oddity describe what you are getting: a live, multi-media spectacle that takes you on a musical journey through the constantly metamorphosing career of Rock and Roll's most celebrated innovator. Brighton and his band, the venue says, perform a note-for-note theatrical concert.

That phrase is the promise. This is not a bar band working through the hits in jeans. The Coach House's tribute listing calls it a full-scale stage production, with flamboyant costume changes, elaborate staging, perfectly emulated vocals and, in the venue's words, one of the best backing bands in the business. Bowie changed shape every few years. A show that follows his whole career has to change with him, which means a lot of wardrobe and a band that can move between eras without a seam.

A note-for-note theatrical Bowie concert, on the night the audience gets to dress up too.

Brighton has been at this a long time. Promotional material for the show says he has worked as a celebrity look-alike and sound-alike since 1994, and that his first impersonation job was playing George Harrison in a spinoff of the original *Beatlemania* show. He has focused on Bowie since the start of the 2000s, and the same material says the show has toured widely: across the United States and into Canada, Mexico, Australia, much of Europe, Israel, New Zealand and China. A University of Houston–Clear Lake feature calls him a top Bowie impersonator keeping the Thin White Duke's music alive. His credits, as the show tells it, include appearing alongside Bowie himself in TV commercials.

Orange County keeps having him back, and that may be the best review a tribute act can get. The Coach House has hosted David Brighton's Space Oddity several times over the years. Its site still carries pages from earlier dates, and one of them is marked sold out. A theatrical Bowie show suits a room this size, and the venue seems to agree.

There is no new album to promote, which is the point of a tribute. What Brighton sells is the chance to hear the catalogue played as a full theatrical show, without a ticket to a stadium or a time machine. Plenty of Bowie fans need little excuse to dress up. On Halloween they will have the best one they will get all year.

Check the Coach House for tickets and doors before you head down the 5. Then pick an era. There are plenty to choose from, and the man on stage will probably wear most of them before the night is out.

Sources: The Coach House (home / this week's calendar) (thecoachhouse.com); The Coach House: David Brighton's Space Oddity (thecoachhouse.com); The Coach House: David Brighton's Space Oddity (earlier date) (thecoachhouse.com); The Coach House: Space Oddity, Tribute to David Bowie (thecoachhouse.com); Mayo Arts: David Brighton's Space Oddity, The Ultimate David Bowie Experience (mayoarts.org); UHCL News: Top Bowie impersonator David Brighton keeps the Thin White Duke's music alive (news.uhcl.edu)