A bootylicious blockbuster from Queen Bey herself

LIVE: BEYONCE (Principality Stadium, Cardiff) Verdict: Sci-fi soul spectacular ★★★★★

WHEN she released last summer’s Renaissance album, Beyonce was at pains to stress it was merely Act One.

The onus was predominantly on the music — a euphoric celebration of disco, funk and house — with surprisingly little sign of the filmed extras that often accompany her big records.

She’s now adding Act Two — the Renaissance live show — and it’s safe to say we now have the visuals to go with the songs.

The first night of her UK stadium tour was staged amid a bouncing sea of crop tops, glitter and pink stetsons . . . and that was just her fans (the socalled BeyHive), who had packed the streets of Cardiff in their thousands beforehand.

The show itself featured a mammoth stage and LED screen, brassy band, automated moon buggy, dancers . . . and the spectacle of a bootylicious Beyonce singing while suspended above the crowd, mounted on a gravity-defying glass horse. Underpowered it was not.

At the heart of a mesmerising two-and-a-halfhour blockbuster performance, though, was Queen Bey herself. On a night dominated by songs from Renaissance and 2011’s career-defining 4, the record that augmented her R&B heritage with broader soul styles and 1980s-influenced pop, she dazzled, reiterating her vocal range, versatility and charisma.

The evening was divided into a series of chapters. The first began with the singer making a diva-like entrance, rising from a trapdoor in a silver ballgown. The mellow pop-soul ballads that followed — Dangerously In Love, 1+1 — came with the whiff of a Vegas residency. ‘How y’all doin’?’ she inquired, with a Texas twang.

From there, the show morphed into the world’s biggest nightclub. Moving between a sci-fi themed stage and circular walkway, Beyonce delivered a string of high-wattage crescendos, each one seemingly more potent than the last.

It was as if she’d recreated Studio 54 . . . on the Starship Enterprise.

There were some traditional soul moments — a sultry cover of Maze’s 1981 hit Before I Let Go; a Love On Top singalong; an extended Crazy In Love with a jazz-funk coda.

Given the length of the set, momentum was occasionally lost in the video interludes during the star’s many costume changes. Those did, at least, allow the rest of us a breather. And the highlights will live long in the memory.

■ The tour continues tomorrow at Murrayfield stadium, edinburgh (livenation.co.uk).