Britney Is In Control

The following italicized article is from www.ocregister.com:

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to Staples Center in July, but Britney Spears beat them to it by bringing her circus/freak show to the same arena Thursday for a two-night stand.

And it was indeed a freak show.

But unlike the freak show that doubles for the pop singer's real life, this one was intentional.

For those wondering if the show that is her life would take the life out of her show, you need not wonder anymore.

Britney's got game.

Although early reviews of this tour were mixed, it looked Thursday night as if Spears got it together for her adopted hometown (she opened the tour in her actual hometown of New Orleans). Perhaps it was her two young sons in attendance that inspired her, but she looked healthy, her dancing was spot-on and her lip-synching was genuine. The 90-minute concert was…well, it was a show.

Created with a circus theme to promote her "Circus" album, the show took place on three connected stages built to resemble a three-ring circus. The singer started the concert in ringmaster garb, complete with lion-tamer's whip, and changed costumes so many times that Cher must have turned over in her walk-in closet.

It was Britney's first arena tour in five years, and the first since her very public meltdown that has seen control of her own life taken out of her hands. But she was clearly in charge at Thursday's show, and one might assume that she intended to make a statement to that effect.

The sold-out arena contained no doubters. They love Britney so much that it hurts.

I swear that the group of young men in front of me forcibly squeezed their heads when Britney came out as if they were trying to keep the gray matter from exploding from their skulls. The young women behind me shrieked so loud, I thought my gray matter was going to explode from my skull.

The audience had a smattering of tweens and very young girls with their parents, but an overwhelming majority were women in their 20s who grew up with the 27-year-old pop star, and young men from the dance club scene. In other words, it was pretty much Madonna's crowd.

And that was no accident. The Madonna influence was obvious, from the sensual dance numbers and leather costumes to the playing of Madonna's "Ray of Light" just before the start. During a video segment, the crowd was treated to a quick cut of the infamous Madonna-Britney kiss on the MTV Video Music Awards.

But the crowd is clearly in Brit Brit's camp now. Whenever a member of the Pussycat Dolls, the opening act, mentioned the words "Britney" or "circus," the crowd went crazy. When fans discovered that Britney's boys were sitting in the sound booth in the loge level, every camera turned in their direction.

And that was a lot of cameras, folks. It seemed as if all 20,000 fans had cameras with them, and those cameras were trained on Spears the entire show.

I should note that by the time the concert took a turn toward darker material and racier themes, the kids had already been taken from the arena.

A half-hour before the concert started, while roadies were setting up the elaborate circus set, the stage was filled with assorted clowns, jugglers, acrobats, unicyclists, strong men, men on stilts, little people in costume, contortionists and magicians.

In other words, it was a typical night at Britney's.

Oops, I did it again.

Once the show began, the crowd leaped up as one, and didn't sit down for the next 35 minutes. It was only when Britney announced a slow number that the crowd sat. But that didn't last long. It was the last slow number we'd hear. Mostly, it was a high-energy dance show, interspersed with pyrotechnics, rising and lowering platforms and music videos.

The inclusion of those videos was interesting because Britney Spears, more than almost any other artist, is a child born and nurtured during the music-video age. At one point, there was a break to give the singer a chance to change and for a new set to be erected. A Britney music video was shown on a overhead screen and, later, the singer's entire professional life was shown in a montage of her music videos. It was like a greatest hits segment, and audience members cheered their favorites.

Taken as a whole, the show really worked. It was well-paced and entertaining, and contained no lulls. I don't know that any pop music show is worth this kind of money (my seat was in the $150 section, and I had a nice view of the $500 seats below), but nobody was complaining. Everyone seemed to feel they got a lot of bang for their bucks, and that says a lot in this economy.

I would imagine that, on some level, there was also a collective sigh of relief. These last few years, with all the drama that surrounded the singer's well-documented divorce, custody battles and court-ordered hospitalizations, have not only been tough on Spears, but on her fans as well.

They came out to support her, and finding her strong and in control was a bonus.

Source: OC Register