The backscreens pop alive. A wall of photographer’s flashguns. On cyberpunk crutches, Lady Gaga stumbles jerkily towards us. She sings her 2009 global smash “Paparazzi”, her arms clad in armour, on her head a metallic skullcap. Her corseted dress has a train that extends, diaphanous, floating back behind her the entire length of the long catwalk into the audience. It disappears into the darkness of an arch.
Theatre, yes, but Gaga is committed. Her eyes on the big screen above aren’t smirky or cool. They have a performative, deranged intensity. Lady Gaga is a proper pop star, haemorrhaging talent and charisma. She’s spectacularly translated her megawattage to the big screen in films such as A Star is Born and House of Gucci. But, until this year, she hadn’t had an album that consistently reflected her status since 2016’s underrated Joanne. All that changed with Mayhem. It’s as dynamic as anything she’s created. She knows it. She plays all but two tracks tonight.
These include some of the many visual highlights. She sings the electro-rockin’ “Perfect Celebrity” to a skeleton while lying in a giant elevated sandpit, until her dancers writhe out of the sand to join in for last year’s single, “Disease”. The sequence concludes with her, white-clad, beating up a masked, red-dressed alter-ego. Or how about the steroid disco twosome of “Zombieboy” and recent single “The Dead Dance”? Not for the first or last time this evening, Gaga channels Dickens’ deathless jilted goth, Miss Haversham, all distressed wedding wear. Leaping about, she’s Mary Poppins from Hell!
The Mayhem Ball is a show of about two-and-a-half hours, broken into four chapters, each announced high above the stage (as well as a finale and encore). Titles include “Every Chessboard Has Two Queens”, and the (very loose) theme throughout is (possibly) Gaga’s psychologically stable side struggling with her primal but creative id. This is most explicit near the start, during the Justice-like attack of “Aura” when, amidst chants of “Off with her head”, Gaga “kills” a faceless white queen figure. The body is then taken away, accompanied by Gaga accessorizing a red glitter walking stick and show of cleavage.
The stage set seems based on the vulgarian balconies of 19th century French grand opera. In the lowest sections a band plays, properly rockin’ out, drum solos’n’all, to cover costume changes. During, I think, “The Beast” a James Hetfield-alike fret-wrangler joins Gaga for a metal-style guitar duel.
Thematically, the Mayhem Ball also contains visual elements borrowed from 17th century Venetian masquerades, notably an extraordinary sequence where, after being manhandled by dancers wearing sinister beaked plague masks, a black-hooded Gaga is ferried in a lantern-lit boat up the catwalk by yet another baleful red figure. She sings the epic “Shallows” from A Star is Born. She may only be five foot one but, my God, the voice on her.
Seamed through everything is techno. In How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran recalls hanging out with Gaga at Berlin’s underground club mecca Berghain. Gaga still retains the flavour. Pounding Teutonic four-to-the-floor explodes regularly, deep-dipped in the hard house sounds of long-ago sweaty Nineties gay dance floors (such as Trade). From the throwaway sex-sass of “LoveGame” (“Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick”) to the magnificent stomp of “Judas”.
“Put ya paws up, motherfuckers” she roars, like Maxim from The Prodigy.
Her crowd, heavy on the LGBT community, adore her. They’re dressed to the nines. On the way into the venue, I saw security debating whether to let in a young man in a blue sequinned dress with a whole skeleton attached to his front (they did). Her “little monsters”, no longer so little, 15 years into her career, sing along with passion. This 20,000-strong choir comes into its own during ballads. On “Million Reasons” Gaga’s foghorn might is backed to the hilt, but it’s a sequence where she plays three songs on a deconstructed piano that really shows how she can hold a room. “Edge of Glory” is too bombastic for me on record while the chorus of oldie “Dance in the Dark” tips into cheese, but tonight, stripped to their elementals, they become emotionally alive. The latter, rarely played live, is suddenly a strident two fingers to gas-lighting.
There’s so much to take in, from the choppy funk-metal groove of “Killah”, for which she appears from a giant skull wearing rose-littered steam-punk Victoriana, to the studded leather underwear party of “Summerboy”.
Of her many hits, “Bad Romance” may be her most broadly loved anthem. The main set closes with it. Gaga’s hair is in two pronged bulbs, her hands in raggy, oversized white cotton gloves with extended cartoon witch fingers. The O2 is alive with bodies moving. It’s a perfect pop gem. After this, all goes dark, then the big screen pops to life. There’s Gaga backstage, wiping away her make-up, wearing a simple black wig-cap, then she and her many dancers, now dressed down, parade corridors back to the stage singing the Yazoo-goes-Europop “How Bad do You Want Me?”. For such a flashy show, it’s an unfeigned, open gesture, topped off with a big theatre-front bow for all, Gaga cuddling and bigging up various crew, everyone boogieing about to a recording of “Monster”.
But it was earlier that things, perhaps, reached their apex, when she sang “Born This Way”. The place went nuts. I’d not realised quite what an anthem this song is for those who feel othered. Despite constant endorsements for “our community” throughout, Gaga is not an explicitly political beast but, as the crowd wildly revels in "Born This Way", it feels, fleetingly, like a spirited antidote to our ugly times. Again, not a song I love on record, but it moves me, emblematic of how Gaga lashes gaudy Vegas showbiz to so much heart.
Below: watch the video for "Abracadabra" by Lady Gaga
