Katy Perry’s giant-sized Witness tour delivers sensory overload at Adelaide Entertainment Centre
GIANT stuff — you name it and US pop star Katy Perry has it, beginning with giant hits, in the mind-blowing sensory overload that is her Witness world tour at Adelaide Entertainment Centre.
GIANT stuff — you name it and US pop star Katy Perry has it, beginning with giant hits, in the mind-blowing sensory overload that is her Witness world tour.
Giant lips, giant dice, giant roses, giant insects, giant dancing flamingoes, a giant lion’s head, a giant Venus flytrap and even a giant basketball court are among the many oversized playthings that Perry conjures on stage at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, where she performs again on Monday and Tuesday.
Oh, and there are also miniature planets — which are still pretty huge — including one with Saturn-like rings upon which Perry flies through the auditorium during Wide Awake, before descending to don giant angel wings.
From the moment she arrives to the tour’s title track clad in golden armour through the iris of a giant eye that also serves as the stage’s main video screen, to the second she disappears in the closing grasp of a giant mechanical hand, the singer bombards her audience with an ever-changing array of costume changes, dance routines, video and laser effects and rumbling recorded overtures.
It might all be a metaphor for the singer’s career, as she pushes to break beyond the kiddies’ pop princess label and into more adult territory. Be warned — young fans may need an afternoon nap if they are to last the distance of Perry’s two-hour show, which doesn’t kick off until after 9pm.
Circus performers tumble out of and over dice as red-and-black confetti shaped like clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds rains on the crowd in Roulette; Perry joins her dancers in robotic choreography on Dark Horse, and giant puppets with TV sets for heads prowl the stage in Chained to the Rhythm.
She rises to the rafters on a yellow platform in Teenage Dream, then removes her white checked suit jacket to reveal a bra top made of LED lights which flash the words Hot N Cold — for which she straps on a pink Flying V guitar as the stage and screen are then bombarded by flamingoes when the tune merges into Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.).
The dancers re-emerge wearing cut-out doll costumes for California Gurls, complete with Patrick Nagel style video illustrations (think Duran Duran’s Rio album cover).
There are a couple of surprisingly flat moments late in the show during Perry’s Big movie inspired piano dance antics with the costumed “Left Shark” and the audience member oversized basketball shootout, both of which break the momentum and go on a bit too long.
Perry’s stage persona is also as brash as her singing, with a disconcerting tendency to talk about herself in the third person, although she did share her thoughts on having met a koala in Adelaide: “They sleep for 19 hours and eat for five hours … I am a koala”.
As if to follow the shark routine — which ends in the theme from Jaws — Perry is consumed by a (you guessed it) giant pair of lips that would make Mick Jagger envious in I Kissed A Girl, which goes from a heavy house-style dance mix back into the more familiar pop arrangement mid-song.
Alien stilt-walking bugs prowl the stage in Déjà vu, Tsunami and E.T. before Katy is once again devoured, this time by a spiked plant in Bon Appetit.
There’s a tribute to Janet Jackson with a dash of What Have You Done For Me Lately? — echoing the show’s earlier Rhythm Nation-style choreography — before Perry takes flight on her orb for a trip to the stars in silver 1920s-inspired attire for Wide Awake, then sits among the audience for the ballad Into Me You See and rises again with angel wings for the tribute to her “matriarchs” on Power.
The screen transforms into a giant video game and Perry re-emerges in barely-there blue patent gridiron gear, accompanied by pink-and-orange dancers who looked like someone has fused quarterbacks with cheerleaders for the triumphant Part of Me.
Then it is off to the basketball court for Swish Swish — with Adelaide’s youngsters proving they have all the right moves in the audience — and a dash of Hard Knock Life leading into Roar.
How do you top that? By swinging from a clock in Pendulum as it transports Perry to the outstretched palm of a giant hand, where she ignites Firework with shooting stage pyrotechnics and a shower of confetti stars.
By then, everyone in the arena knows they have borne Witness to one of the greatest spectacles in showbiz.
Katy Perry — Witness the Tour
Adelaide Entertainment Centre
July 28, 30 and 31.
