There are pop stars, there are music artists, and then there are the true auteurs. Lady Gaga is the latter. Her Mayhem Ball has landed in London for an four-night run at the O2 Arena that wraps adoring fans in her unparalleled creative vision for two and a half hours. It’s a pop-rock opera for every queer weirdo theatre kid who had an obsessive Phantom of the Opera phase, masterfully interlacing her latest album Mayhem with all of her greatest hits.
Gaga doesn’t so much re-invent herself as build an entire world for the audience to inhabit, a stadium show that’s an immersive theme park ride with pyrotechnics, dancers contorted into improbable shapes, and a cameo from a simply ginormous inflatable skull.
Entering through the grand arch riding a giant red crinoline that conceals a medieval torture cage, she embodies her Mistress of Mayhem, a Queen of Hearts straight from Lewis Carrol’s nightmares that represents Gaga’s darkness, rage and self-doubt, hellbent on persecuting the White Queen. Who is also played by Gaga. Everyone has an inner critic, but Stefani Germanotta has turned fighting self-doubt into artistic fuel of titanic proportions.
That Gaga can perform with such physicality while living with fibromyalgia is incredible. But she doesn’t create in spite of it — at The Mayhem Ball she turns it into a character of its own, the vengeful Phantom that haunts the Opera Haus of her design. Throughout the show she tussles with it, runs from it, and ultimately embraces it. She stalks the stage with a bedazzled cane for Abracadabra, lurches up the catwalk in double crutches cast as knightly gauntlets for Paparazzi, and grapples with a pain-red monster in a sandy tomb during Disease.
Hits from Gaga’s wildly successful foray into Hollywood were given a musical theatre makeover. It turns out Shallow (from her Oscar-winning turn in A Star is Born) is actually best performed while taking a ride on the fibro-phantom’s skull-gondola gliding on a sea of poisonous green dry ice. Phantom wasn’t the only reference; there was more than a hint of Evita, with a balcony performance from Gaga mugging to the camera with the glittering audience behind her blasted onto the big screen.
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High camp almost teetered into cheesey tie-in when, during Act III (The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name) it all got a bit Tim Burton with her performance of The Dead Dance from season 2 of Netflix’s Wednesday. But special guests Emma Myers, who stars as fan-favourite Enid, and Evie Templeton who plays Agnes, sold it when they stayed on for a performance of LoveDrug, giddily flanking Gaga as they cavorted round the stage.
Plenty of pop divas pay special attention to their queer fans — we’ll be keeping the lights on when the Vegas residency years come around — but Gaga truly embraces us. Born This Way, the anthem of every closeted teen planning their first tattoo (I know it’s not just me) was dedicated to us and trans pride flags were waved along the barrier throughout the show. This is a song that shot to number one in the chats in 2011, when gay marriage was still four years off being legalised in her home country of America. Now, with trans rights under threat in the US and here in the UK, it feels more urgent than ever, a celebration and a cri de coeur for the clubs and the marches alike.
Burning the house down has become a recurring motif in stadium shows recently — Taylor Swift torched the Lover’s House during the Era’s Tour, Charli xcx set fire to the Brat curtain at Glastonbury, and Lana Del Rey did some symbolic arson at Wembley over the summer. But none of them can hold a candle to the conflagration that engulfed the set through big-screen wizardry for the final act of The Mayhem Ball, setting the stage for a finale where plague doctor nurses resurrected Gaga, now with wild witchy fingers, for a barnstorming and bonkers rendition of Bad Romance.
Monsters never die, and as the audience solemnly swore we’ll be with Gaga until the end. “If I come back in 20 years from now, will you all come to the show?” she teased the screaming crowd. She could play this show for 20 years and you wouldn’t get bored.
Lady Gaga: The Mayhem Ball at the O2, October 2, 4 and 7, theo2.co.uk
Full Set List
Bloody Mary
Abracadabra
Judas
Aura
Scheiße
Garden Of Eden
Poker Face
Perfect Celebrity
Disease
Paparazzi
LoveGame
Alejandro
The Beast
Killah
Zombieboy
Love Drug
Applause
Just Dance
Shadow Of A Man
Kill For Love
Summerboy
Born This Way
Million Reasons
Shallow
Die With A Smile
Speechless
The Edge of Glory
Vanish Into You
Bad Romance
How Bad Do U Want Me
