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The O2 Dublin

YUSUF, the man who was once known as Cat Stevens, has a brilliant backstory: a groovy pop star about London town in the mid-1960s, Stevens (his birth name is Stephen Dimitri Georgiou) contracted tuberculosis in 1968, and experienced something close to a spiritual epiphany. Within a year, he had transformed himself into a bearded bedsit singer-songwriter, whose 1970s albums Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat, and Catch Bull at Fourset the template for generations of sensitive types to express their innermost thoughts and turmoil. And now? Well, Yusuf (he converted to Islam and changed his name in the late 1970s) has “let the music take him where his heart wants to go”. And if this means highly disgruntled sections of an almost sold-out show voicing their displeasure at a lengthy segment of professional musical theatre, then so be it.