LADY GAGA at Air Canada Centre, Thursday, March 3. Rating: NNN
In the glossy, messy world of Lady Gaga, contrivance is currency. “I hate the truth. I love lies,” she told the capacity crowd while crouched on the stage in a black bra and panties smeared with fake blood. “Think of me as a big lie that you tell over and over again until it becomes true.”
Translate: if you say something like you mean it enough times, it will eventually become reality. The poignant message was one of many the 23-year-old pop star imparted between choreography and costume changes during her Monster Ball concert, a show that played like a camped-up couture cabaret retelling of self-help craze The Secret.
While veteran performers like Kylie Minogue, George Michael and Kanye West have surrounded themselves with slick, high-concept LED displays in recent years, this show was grounded in musical theatre tradition and culminated in a ridiculous dance with a giant, multi-tentacled monster puppet.
Although much has been made about Gaga’s bid for gay icon status of late, the audience was broad, with young girls dressed in her signature looks the biggest demographic. There were a lot of hair bows in the house, but one woman in the front row went the extra mile and wore an imitation of the meat dress from the MTV Video Music Awards. “That light was always inside of you,” the singer told her.
Unlike the aforementioned acts, Gaga doesn’t yet have enough solid tunes to deliver a hit-after-hit set, but that didn’t matter. The anonymous club beats of early songs like Lovegame and Boys Boys Boys, but augmented by a live drummer and guitar-monies, became a suitable platform for the loose narrative – a trip to the Monster Ball. She worked the dance routines hard, often gasping for air as she addressed the crowd afterwards.
For a moment, the music overshadowed the production when she invited 10-year-old YouTube sensation Maria Aragon to perform a duet of number one hit Born This Way on piano.
From there she played the set’s highlight, a rousing ballad You And I, frequently ad-libbing and breaking into a bluesy cadence. It was an unusually intimate moment for a pop show that ended with Gaga lying on the ground and unleashing a melismatic wail, Patti Labelle style.
Throughout the set her oft-repeated message of equality and acceptance manifested in many fan-centric moments – some spontaneous, others clearly planned. When fans tossed Barbie dolls on stage she bit the heads and said “Barbie made me want to throw up my food in high school.” She then phoned a fan named Brandon to tell him Virgin Mobile would donate part of the evening’s proceeds to an LGBTQ youth charity. He responded that she inspired him to come out of the closet.
At two-hours the show was a bit overlong, and the costume changes brought the show to a dead halt. Though she’s known for being inventive visually, her schtick is more earnest and straight-forward than cleverly-conceived. “Pull your cocks out” was a typical applause-baiting line.
For all her freakish fashions and fake blood, it’s her hard-working attitude and the “be whoever it is you wanna be” rhetoric that resonated the most. The message should be a no brainer in the pop world – but it isn’t. As much as she says she loves bullshit, she’s quick to call it when she hears it. “I never lip-synch,” she growled. “You’d never pay your hard-earned money or watch some television show to see some bitch be lazy for two hours.”
