LADY GAGA IS BACK–

with the scariest hair since Mrs T!

TIM DE LISLE Lady Gaga

Merkur Spiel-Arena, Dusseldorf, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, Friday and Saturday

★★★★★

Lady Gaga has spent the past few years not being Lady Gaga. The woman born Stefani Germanotta 36 years ago has conquered Hollywood, first shining in a classic pop-star role as the wannabe singer in A Star Is Born, then making the leap out of music to play the woman who married a brand in House Of Gucci. Her collection of awards (359 of them, according to Wikipedia) now includes several marked ‘Best Actress’.

All this has left time for only two tours in eight years – one with Tony Bennett, the other promoting the 2016 album Joanne, which was, by Gaga’s standards, low-key.

You can tell she means business when she bills a tour as a ball. To The Fame Ball, The Monster Ball, The Born This Way Ball and The Artpop Ball, she now adds The Chromatica Ball.

As well as being in demand from Hollywood, she is often in pain from fibromyalgia, so this tour is a short one – the only stops in Britain are two nights two nights on Harry Kane’s home turf next weekend. But, as her whole career has shown, being short is no impediment to being huge.

The first night is fizzing with excitement as 65,000 fans file into a covered stadium in Dusseldorf. Fourteen years after her first hit, Gaga’s followers are all consenting adults now. She acknowledges the change by, thankfully, no longer addressing them as Little Monsters.

A woman famous for her eyepopping outfits makes her entrance in something wildly uncharacteristic: a dull grey boiler suit. She has come to the ball as a prisoner from the future, encased in a bulky straitjacket, with her platinum locks scraped back in the scariest hairdo since

Maggie Thatcher. As the band plays Bad Romance, her dancers spin her round: the Lady is for turning.

The idea, presumably, is to capture how it feels to have a chronic illness. It’s striking and memorable, but also a bit chilly. And, as Bad Romance gives way to Just Dance and Poker Face, it’s not making full use of the anthems that made Gaga’s name.

It is effective, though, as a set-up for the extravaganza to come. This is a show of six segments, each more colourful than the last – hence Chromatica. The interludes are lengthy but worth it as the costume designers go full Gaga.

Her shoulder pads are so pointy they make Grace Jones look like an amateur. Her flared jumpsuit is pure gold tinfoil. Her old signature look, black leotard and fishnets, now comes with a fascinator that turns her into a giant purple insect.

A lesser star might be upstaged by this wardrobe, but Gaga’s presence, whatever she happens to be wearing, is as fierce as the heat. Like all the best divas, she’s imperious and fragile at the same time.

The video screens – at least six of them – are so compelling that the music is apt to be merely a soundtrack. Chromatica the album, released in 2020, supplies plenty of pumping dance-pop, but, as usual at Gaga’s gigs, the magic comes when she moves to the B stage to sit at the piano.

She begins Born This Way as if it were a ballad by

Elton John, rumbling and ruminative, before pulling out the stops with the full band. She sings Shallow, the A Star Is Born theme, with a blazing warmth that shows why it became her greatest hit of the 2010s. She makes Always Remember Us This Way, the other power ballad from A Star Is Born, both epic and intimate.

The Hollywood songs are old-fashioned but they suit her. Never mind Artpop, this is from-the-heart pop. Gaga is having a ball, and so are her fans.