Lady Gaga delights in the Berlin Uber Arena with her “Mayhem Ball”: an evening between art, chaos and emotional vocal power. Read the review now.
Halloween was a full four days ago on this gray, gloomy November day, and yet there is something mystical, something transformed about the evening as thousands of people stream into Berlin’s Uber Arena. They call themselves Little Monsters, and they worship the Mother Monster, who will appear on the Berlin stage in a few minutes.
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It is Lady Gaga’s first of two concert evenings in the capital and the completely sold-out arena is packed with young people in fishnets and leather, in glitter and corsets, in defiant self-fulfillment or at least on the way there.
There is no opening act for the American megastar who has become a symbol of Misfits and Mayhem, of identitarian liberation and artistic-genius chaos, and the fans are waiting for the appearance of the self-appointed ruler of madness with classical music playing from the loudspeakers. The resting stage set is an ancient temple – our “opera house”, as she will later call it, and on it sits a larger-than-life size Lady Gaga, dressed in scarlet, writing on papyrus with a quill pen of the same color. An ancient-classical idea of aesthetics that resonates in the beams of the illuminated stage temple gives us a foreshadowing of a narrative in which the chosen form is celebrated as much as the sound, mixed with operatic theatricality.
Gaga is the bard, she is Shakespeare, she is Homer, and with her bleeding quill she writes her presence into reality until her hologram goes out, the roar grows louder and she is actually on the stage.
Metamorphosis and masque
What you hear now is the Lady Gaga you know – live, lifelike, with enough vocal power to break through the walls of the Uber Arena and the sound wall to boot – but what you see is never the same woman you thought was in front of you seconds ago. Between dizzying dance figures and costume changes, Lady Gaga has mastered the game of characters and identities perfectly. Between the acts and chapters of her performance she changes bodies and figures as effortlessly as her clothes; beneath the roar of the crowd, Lady Gaga is metamorphosis and transformation, she is mask and pretense and the truth behind them.
The evening’s performance is divided into acts. The ancient setting of the stage is not an empty promise, but a prologue – that what we are witnessing here is play and acting, according to the old rule that the best way to learn who you are is to become things you have not yet been. And Lady Gaga herself prefers to be everything at the same time. She is the bride, the sick one (with a skeleton!?), the knight. She is a doll, she is the injured person, she is a grave guardian. She’s angel and demon and party girl and sometimes dead and sometimes very much alive. She’s blood red, poison green, then ebony black again and wait, now blonde again? Lady Gaga is amphibious at heart – or as they say, she is what happens when twins duel – and yet chaos always wins. “The Mayhem Ball” is a grand costume ball and an imperial spectacle, a light play between epilepsy and ecstasy (literally), it is the manic interplay of pieces on a chessboard, and the queen reigns and the pawns fall to their knees.
Power of sound in real time
And at the end? In the end, Lady Gaga’s first concert evening in Berlin is a triumph of art. Because while lights and costumes fight for attention, it is still her unique voice and her diverse catalog that make this evening an incomparable celebration of Artpop – and, not to forget, the deeply impressive performance of her large team of dancers, who transform the stage into a living work of art in a stirring and expressive way. Gaga’s vocals are flawless and powerful, and hearing her breathe between songs is a joyous reminder that we are hearing her voice in the here and now, in real time.
She makes a successful selection of songs from each of her artistic eras. While party bangers like “Applause”, “Just Dance”, “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance” completely pull all the fans out of their seats and classics like “Papparazzi” and “Alejandro” are sung along at the top of their lungs, lovers of their quieter works like “Shallow”, “A Million Reasons” or, one of the surprise songs, “The Edge of Glory”, performed solo on the piano, also get their money’s worth. “Born This Way” is an important reminder that a Lady Gaga concert is about so much more than performance – namely about self-expression, representation, self-fulfillment and freedom. “This whole show is for you,” Lady Gaga calls out to the representatives of the LGBTQIA+ community present. “For your love. For your freedom. For your pride.”
While Gaga’s dance classics make you feel lucky to have seen her live, it’s the four songs toward the end, performed simply on piano, that give us the feeling of getting close to Lady Gaga – of looking behind the many different masks she played with during the show. Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem Ball” is a dance between decay and rebirth, where everything is allowed and in the end there is only joy. Before the evening began, you remember, messages from fans flashed across the screen. Most of them agreed: Lady Gaga guides people through the hardest times of their lives. But this show has once again made it clear: it also takes us through the most beautiful ones.