Lady Gaga at her brilliant, Burtonesque best in triumphant Sydney return

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Lady Gaga
★★‏‏★★
Accor Stadium, December 12

Lady Gaga in the London leg of the tour.

“Welcome to our Opera House, Sydney!” With those words, Lady Gaga announced her triumphant return to the Harbour City after more than a decade away.

It helped that we were 14 kilometres west in Olympic Park, as Gaga’s sense of the theatrical needs space. She was by turns bold, brilliant and bat shit in a maximalist 2½-hour, five-act spectacular charting 20 years of pop excess and Tim Burtonesque burlesque.

Kicking off with an almost-restrained version of Bloody Mary (while sitting on top of a two-storey domed curtain, mind you), the mayhem started in earnest with Abracadabra and its command to dance or die.

The early leg of electro-pop was a triumph of crowd-pleasing staging and choreography over songwriting. New track Garden of Eden and the now-classic Poker Face stand out from the early pack as top-notch pop tunes.

There is a lot that can be said about the staging and sets. Giant skulls for Killah; a Phantom of the Opera-inspired boat ride and mask for the ballad Shallow; a grave that resembled kitty litter for the post-apocalyptic zombie rave of Disease.

Gaga’s rainbow cape envelops the entire stage.

At times, the show overwhelmed the songs, but they were mostly a terrific match. Papparazzi, a chance to let Gaga’s voice shine on one of her best songs, was also the showcase of a giant costume spanning the whole stage that resembled a rainbow train on a wedding dress.

There was a lot to take in, but it would be churlish to say it was too much. Zombieboy is no Thriller, and Dead Dance is one for the Wednesday fans, but Gaga is at her best singing a hedonistic tune and few others can belt out three in a row that are as infectious as LoveDrug, Applause and Just Dance.

Some of Gaga’s songs might be only 80 to 90 per cent as good as Bad Romance, but then most things are. By the time that mega hit rolls around, the 14-time Grammy winner has taken us to the Edge of Glory like Colonel Kurtz’s snail on a razor blade. After 20 years of dividing and conquering the pop world, few will be left on the fence. Gaga is among 70,000 fans who love her.

The Mayhem Ball wisely largely eschewed the Joker-era and Tony Bennett duet detours of her career and put the poptastic bangers front and centre. For all her reinvention and forays into film over the past two decades, it’s the thunderous pop smashes that still hit the hardest.

Lady Gaga performs at Accor Stadium again on December 13.