One takes for granted these days that a major pop star’s tour show will be a spectacle, what with the tickets costing three figures (if you’re lucky) – but Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball still blew me away. In a two-and-a-half hour orgy of pop theatre at London’s O2 Arena on Monday night – the first of four dates at the venue, with two more to follow at Manchester’s Co-op Live – she proved herself to be the original and the best at this game of immersive, spellbinding live performances.
As we took our seats we were serenaded by Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen in all its over-the-top, romantic glory – and what followed felt like not only a surface-level nod to its “aesthetic”, but a truly operatic event. Gaga has always been a master of blending visuals with her thumping, big-ticket pop songs, and The Mayhem Ball is a narrative extravaganza of the gothic, the mystical and the macabre: Gaga transformed into queens, crones and divas against a set designed like an old-fashioned theatre, costumes becoming increasingly exaggerated and bizarre, all corsets, capes, feathers and wigs. “Death or love tonight?” she sings in recent Europop hit “Abracadabra” – a true operatic sentiment if ever there was one.
She was weird (hobbling with a cane, furiously, down the catwalk), ferocious (battling her alter-ego in 2008 mega hit “Poker Face”) and completely electrifying, performing near non-stop choreography through the five acts of the show and commanding the 20,000-strong crowd – dressed in Gaga merch or, even better, Gaga-style over-the-top outfits – effortlessly. What distinguished Gaga’s show from other stadium pop performances was the sense of occasion: “some of you have been with me for 20 years”, she told us, shouting out her reams of queer fans in particular; her regular “balls”, as her tours are always known, feel like a true coming together, events that demand a particular protocol and state of mind.
The show had a real sense of occasion (Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation)The songs remain, of course, as unapologetic and expressive as ever, old classics “Paparazzi” and “Alejandro” landing on a par with newer favourites “Disease” and “Perfect Celebrity”. Some tracks caused uproar: the euphoric “Applause” and Pride anthem “Born This Way” were among the highlights of her hoard of bangers, while “Shallow” – the soaring ballad from A Star is Born, in which Gaga co-starred with Bradley Cooper in 2008 – incited widespread sobbing and screaming along.
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Towards the end of Act IV, having immersed us fully in a topsy-turvy world that’s part fairy tale, part sex club, Gaga came to the end of the catwalk to perform at the piano on her own, having been flanked for the rest of the show by troupes of dancers and a backing band. She was visibly emotional addressing the crowd – “Can you feel the love all around you?” she asked – and performed a wildcard track, “Speechless”, a ballad inspired, she said, by British songwriting. The crowd sang along with her as though we were in the pub – and afterwards she sobbed, head in her hands, regaining her composure for another unexpected number, “The Edge of Glory”, as if we needed more evidence that her vocal is powerful enough to course right through you.
She closed out the night with a showstopping “Bad Romance”, flames erupting at the back of the stage: it’s impossible at moments like these to forget that Lady Gaga is one of the greats, a pop revolutionary. The Mayhem Ball is utterly magnificent.
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