Ah yes, it seems like only yesterday when Lady Gaga was making appearances at Tiger Heat and performing in Ikea parking lots in San Diego. It really has only been a year since her first album, The Fame, dropped, and she’s already selling out arenas across the nation. Her tour made its last Southern California stop at the Nokia Theatre last night, as Gaga played to a completely sold-out, but nervously giddy crowd. The Monster Ball is presented as an “electro pop opera,” complete with -ahem- a large budget, dramatic theatric elements, some choreography, and a perspective-bending stage designed especially for Gaga’s performance.
The stage is designed like a tv-screen with a live band and DJ crouched behind it, and actual television screens surrounding the background of the floor (if that makes any sense at all). When the lights in the theatre went down, the crowd stood up and went absolutely bananas. The stage and the screens on either side projected a
neon green-grid as the music for “Dance in the Dark” started. After a short video introduction in which she flaunted an Alexander McQueen dress and vogued several times, the black box that was behind the curtain illuminated and revealed a fogged over stage and a sequin unitard-clad Gaga in the center, signaling the
show had finally begun.
Lady Gaga may be new in the spotlight, but it’s clear she knows exactly what kind of art she wants to produce. I say art because the show was incredibly high-brow for a pop crowd. The videos she and her production team made reflected the nature of every “monster” she had named, from crows and forestscapes when she discussed loneliness, to bulimic girls purging green slime when she brought up vanity. Gaga gave the crowd a peek into what goes on in her mind as every other song came on; she didn’t stay with the same stage set-up twice. While some elements of her show are familiar, very familiar in fact, it just shows where she’s getting her inspiration from: she banters with the crowd and dresses in flamboyant, revealing outfits reminiscent of Grace Jones. Her back up dancers wear deconstructed, androgynous costumes much like Madonna’s. Her music may have the bubble-gum zest of the Britneys and Christinas before her, but her look and stage presence is very much like the divas that made that kind of music what it is today.
More important than the action on the stage is of course, the music, and Gaga didn’t disappoint. For fans she played just about everything worth hearing, including solo piano versions of “Speechless” and “Pokerface,” and yes, she played with her heels on the keyboard. For everyone else she made it a point to play some interesting choices during interludes, including Combichrist and some opera music. Honestly though, everyone in the building, no matter how guilty of a pleasure it may have been, was humming to the “ma-ma-ma-ma” of “Pokerface” and chanting along to “raa-raa” during the big finale of “Bad Romance.”
In a time when many acts have become lackluster where it comes to live performances (we’re talking to you Brit-Brit), Gaga has come in to save the day. She understands the hype around her, and knows that the more bizarre she is the more the crowd will eat it up. Her latest tour is everything a larger-than-life pop show should be: simple, fun music, big impressive stage set-ups, and enough of her own commentary to let everyone know she’s still human.
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