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.
