Circus Tour 2009 - Britney Vs Take That

By BOO BOO BABY

01 July 2009

On the night of Wednesday 6th June, Babies Boring, Bad and Boo Boo and Bu Bo Ba set off to the O2 for a night of entertainment provided by the legendary Miss Britney Spears and her Circus 2009 Tour. From the outset, the show looked promising as Britney had bought a fairground with her to tie in with the Circus theme (although I personally have never seen a circus and funfair combined - maybe in America) and the crowds of elaborately dressed fans were certainly getting in the spirit of things. At £2 a ride, I had to admit the fair was also reasonably priced and Boring and Bad got tickets to ride. After collecting our tickets from a little window we were disappointed to find no lovely picture of Britney on them or indeed even her name, just the word DUPLICATE in large letters. This may be the fault of the venue rather than Britney but as I am judging the overall experience of the night this nonetheless scored nil points for Britney.

Armed with popcorn, scampi and parmesan chips we entered the auditorium to watch warm up act Ciara who has an impressive singing voice (alarmingly different to her recorded singing voice), impressive dance moves and the strongest thighs I have ever seen. However, her set was lacklustre and dull and despite having three albums under her belt she still does not give an arena standard performance. (Although I do think she may have been forced to keep her set low-key so as to make Britney’s look more of a spectacle in comparison).

In between the two performances were some exciting circus acts (including a midget doing acrobatics) that whipped the crowd into a veritable frenzy in their desperation to see Ms. Spears.

After much speculation as to from which direction Britney would make her entrance (we hoped on a unicycle), she finally appeared descending gracefully from above flanked by Cirque de Soleil-esque dancers and was met by more dancers and circus performers on the stage. She proceeded to work through some risqué outfits and many of her hits including old favourites like ‘Boys,’ controversial current single ‘If You Seek Amy’ and many more, performed in cages, on wheels, on a chaise longue, with a Bollywood style dance troupe and, most beautiful of all, on a sparkling trapeze/ bird-perch type thing (this last was for the allegedly live ‘Everytime'). Unfortunately, fear of a parking ticket meant I missed her encore of ‘Womanizer’, but I will catch it on the DVD. As regards Brintey's singing, I think it is unimportant that she did not sing live. Everyone knew she wouldn’t and I don’t really think that that is what anyone came expecting to see. In fact, she barely bothered to put up the pretence of miming and pushed her head-set mic back so she could dance. Britney is an acknowledged yet vastly under-rated dance talent. Despite all her dramas of late, when it comes to shaking her butt, none of Miss Spears’ contemporaries can touch her. She is undoubtedly the best. However I must criticise Britney’s complete lack of crowd interaction. Beyond a “Hey London!” she said nothing. It may be indicative of how very damaged she still is that maybe she would rather just pretend the crowd didn’t exist but it is a marked difference to her previous tours and almost made you feel like maybe she just didn’t wanna be there.

Although they did not bring a funfair, Take That’s tickets were far superior, with a lovely picture of the boys on making it immediately scrapbook worthy. We missed the first support act Gary Go mainly because it’s a s*** name. Middle band The Script were much better live than they sounded on the radio and are actually very talented and rather attractive. Then came the rain. We were asked not to put up umbrellas as they blocked people’s view of the stage. Fine, except it meant we got so wet it washed all of my make-up clean off! Take That appeared magically on stage from inside several bunches of very large balloons to rapturous applause, screaming and Mexican waving.

Despite the rain, TT went on to perform an amazing 2.5 hour set mixing up new and old favourites, each one exciting the crowd as much as the next. Special mention should be given to the balloons let off gracefully into the air throughout the performance and the-bigger-than-life-size sparkling elephant which astonishingly appeared through the stage floor, did a full turn then actually walked, carrying the boys, along the catwalk that connected the two stages. Everything worked beautifully together to create a very magical atmosphere. All through the performance there were incredible acrobats, a live band and show-girl style dancers many of whom had to have poncho-style rain macs over their lovely costumes. The boys talked to the crowd constantly, graciously thanking us for supporting them through their twenty years together and also for not letting the rain dampen our spirits one bit. Little did they know that we had at least some appreciation for the rain as it forced them to remove their heavy ring-master style jackets and parade around in wet vests. That’s right ladies, despite all being around 40, TT look better now than they have ever done. Encore ‘Relight My Fire’ secured TT’s place as the second best live act I have ever seen. The stadium went completely black then a giant ring master (I’m talking at least as tall as a three storey house) rose up through the floor with a scary video projected face leering at the crowd. The face then appeared to burst into flames and TT performed the most energetic and visually stunning encore I have ever seen, topped off with some lovely fireworks.

Had the two tours not both been called Circus I would never have thought to compare these two pop acts. But, it was interesting to see what very contrasting performances came out of a single theme and two presumably very generous budgets. However, as much as I enjoyed Britney’s Circus, TT’s show knocked hers into a cocked hat. I’m not ordinarily a TT fan but I would advise anyone with the opportunity to go and see them to seize it with both hands because that truly was a performance of which I will never see the like again, until I get the DVD.