Britney Kicks Off Tour In New Orleans To Mixed Reviews
So Britney Spears has finally launched her first tour since the ill-fated Onyx Hotel back in 2004, and from all accounts they rebuilt it, bigger, stronger, faster than before. It's got everything...clowns, a big top, Britney in various stages of undress, ninjas, Perez Hilton...wait, Perez?
A red curtain descends upon the stage. Music starts pounding — the drumbeat of the apocalypse — and keeps building, until a lone ballerina and a mime appear. The mime is clutching a piece of chain-link fence, which he begins twirling faster and faster, until it turns into a geometric square. Then three jugglers and a little person take the stage, then Shaolin monks in black robes, who do a martial-arts routine, complete with kitanas and spinning axe kicks. Then clowns come out with nunchucks. They're followed by acrobats and gymnasts in long flowing robes, performing a routine to the music from "Kill Bill." Then everyone — mime, clowns, jugglers, little person and monks — do a sort of samba, and then Perez Hilton shows up on the video screens to deliver a monologue while dressed as Queen Elizabeth. Then Britney appears and murders him with a crossbow. And then the show starts. Seriously.Apparently, the show could benefit from more songs and less spectacle:
Given the massive size of the center stage (painted to look like a target — we get it, Brit) and the non-stop visual and sonic bombast, the pop princess sometimes got swallowed up. Spark-shooting guns and rings of actual fire couldn't save one-note songs like Do Something and Slave. Fan-favorite Toxic, however, staged mostly with sci-fi-green lighting effects and a minimalist jungle-gym contraption, succeeded because the focus was solely on the star. And her biggest early hit, …Baby One More Time, stripped away all spectacle, with just her and the dancers stalking the bare stage, and was better for it. [...] The Circus show packs 17 song segments and every under-the-big-top cliché except Siegfried & Roy's white tigers into a crowd-pleasing hour and 45 minutes. A comeback, certainly, and a solid one at that. But all the sex, fire and stomp-and-slither choreography can't disguise the fact that the production needs a bigger, purely musical core (a few more songs from the current album would have helped) — and some spontaneity. It wasn't until Spears finally called out "Thank you, New Orleans" after finishing her Womanizer encore that the crowd got a glimpse into the heart of their homegirl from Kentwood.I won't go into all the details of the show, except to say that it includes four parts (Circus, House of Fun, Freakshow/Peepshow and Electro Circ), includes everything from little people to acrobats to set pieces that fly around to flames to an umbrella, Britney struts around showing off her body in various stages of undress and bondage-wear, and seems to be an ADHD tribute to everything Britney. Seriously, the first thought that hit my brain was that this seemed to be designed by a kid who didn't take their Ritalin that day. (I did notice in some of the photos I've seen that one of her outfits is a sparkly bra/corset/hotpants ensemble, which makes me wonder if that was based on what the MTV people wanted her to wear for her ill-fated Gimme More performance. In other photos, the corset is off.)
I do think it's hilarious that people are STILL upset that Britney doesn't sing live at these freak shows. Are you people serious? Like I've said before, when you go see Britney, you are not going to a concert, and if you show up expecting any sort of concert, you are going to be disappointed. It's been proven time and time again that girl just is not a strong singer, she can barely carry a tune, she just doesn't have the pipes (she ain't no Tina Turner), and practically everything she does is manufactured in the studio. No, what Britney does is perform...you are going to see a performance, not a concert. If you lower your expectations and don't expect any actual singing, you'll be okay.
For an example of what I'm talking about:
And it seems that at least one other person agrees with me that what Brit does best is entertain:
Her singing was dominated by a backing track. Her moves were nothing special — defined by much strutting and stripper-like shimmying, with the minimum amount of acrobatics to prove her mettle as a dance-pop queen. Her physical form, still beautiful, didn't take one's breath away the way it did when she was 17. But on Tuesday's opening night of her "Circus" tour at the New Orleans Arena, Britney Spears, the mighty Aphrodite with the troublesome tawdry streak, nonetheless renewed her claim as one of the world's most adept manipulators of the public interest. Powering through a 90-minute show that integrated her impetuous teen hits with the more perverse material from the albums she released after a very public breakdown that made her a constant in the tabloids, the Louisiana native flashed her famous good ol' girl smile at the fans, mostly female, who still find her a worthy patron saint of the erotic arts. [...] Despite that first-night stumble [she appeared to miss her cue to reappear onstage] and several numbers in which her dancing was no more than adequate, Spears can safely call this performance a success. She apparently has no interest in proving herself as a vocalist; Pink is a better acrobat and her friend Justin Timberlake is a far better dancer. But anyone who thinks her lackluster would do well to remember what she really is: a burlesque performer, a carny's dream born a century or so too late to be fated to ply her art upon the midway, but able to fulfill the spectacle of blond ambition now.I still worry that she's putting on too much, too fast, since reviews for the opener have been mixed. I don't think any of us want a repeat of the past few years, complete with mental breakdown and hospitalization. I'm hoping for the best, but I'm also hoping the stress doesn't get to her. Let's not forget that she's still dealing with a mental illness and she still is under a doctor's care for it. I worry that the stress of a tour might be too much, but then again maybe keeping herself busy is exactly what Brit needs right now. Plus, after paying ex Kevin $5000 a week to be there as well, she gets to take her sons with her, which I'm sure is a huge plus for her.
Lastly...some tickets were going for as much as $750 a whack. I'm sure people are going to line up to spend their mortgage money for one night of watching Brit shimmy around a stage. I don't know about you, but there's no ticket in the world worth $750 to me. More reasonably-priced tickets went from anywhere from $95-$250, which I think is still pretty steep. Do people actually have this kind of money to fritter away? But I guess all this has to be paid for somehow. Hey, magicians and stripper poles and Kevin Federline ain't cheap, y'all.
All in all, it seems to be the same thing Brit has offered before, just packaged up in a different way with different fabrics. Considering we've all seen more of Brit's bits than we ever wanted to see over the past couple of years, the flesh-baring costumes just seem to be the same old/same old (okay, okay, we get it...you're still sexy, Brit, put it away). While I'm not crazy about the whore-on-wheels ensembles, girl looks great...about a zillion times better than she's looked in quite a while now. Despite what it may sound like, I wish her the best, I truly do; I just hope that this will all be worth it in the end.
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