Mayhem Ball review: Lady Gaga delivers the most absurd, awe-inspiring show of her career

Dubbing Lady Gaga’s The Mayhem Ball her most outlandish and absurd performance spectacle to date is quite the statement, given that this is the woman who once had luminous goo thrown up on her by a vomit artist.

But if the 20-foot tall, ruby red crinoline gown fits, it fits. And as a dozen dancers crawled from a cage beneath said gown to the Gregorian chants of 2011’s “Bloody Mary”, it became clear: The Mayhem Ball is Gaga’s most bonkers imagining yet.

That feeling was in the air long before Mother Monster was wheeled out atop her tiered red velvet cake dress though. Fans entering London’s O2 Arena for night two of the tour’s European leg last night (30 September) were greeted with Gaga on a screen, in Tudor garbs, blooming red quill in hand, as opera boomed over the arena speakers. Resplendently melodramatic, as always. When she downed her feather and glided away, signalling the show’s start, the screams were deafening. 

From then on, Lady Gaga the zany theatre kid never really took a second to breathe. For “Disease”, the vampy lead single from this year’s critically acclaimed Mayhem album, she laid in a glorified sand box and moaned, her zombified dancers flicking dirt about. Singing 2009’s “Paparazzi”, she hobbled her way up the stage’s runway, dressed in armour and clutching crutches reminiscent of those used in the song’s incendiary music video, a mammoth rainbow cape billowing behind her.

Then there’s “Shallow”, the most cishet hit in Gaga’s discography, which managed to slot in nicely thanks to that oddball brain of hers: this is a more menacing rendition, sung as a becloaked Gaga perched in a bedazzled, old-timey boat guided by a lantern. Who was paddling? A gimp-masked Lord Farquaad, that’s who.

She countered all of this with an earnest, now signature piano section, delivering a sob-worthy rendition of “Dance In The Dark” and “The Edge of Glory”, and paying tribute to the fans who have stood by her for the past 20 years. “If I come back in 20 years, will you come and see me?” she asks, an essentially rhetorical question for the 20,000 leather-clad fans in the audience. While The Mayhem Ball has all the gothic glamour of The Phantom of the Opera and the gaudiness of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the histrionics and heart of Glee are in there, too.

Some will say it’s pretentious; there’s a storyline to follow here somewhere, which involves Gaga battling with an alternate version of herself, with each act divided by a comically ridiculous title, like “Act III: The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name”. But if you let yourself be absorbed by the pomp, it’s a riotously good time.

Bizarrely, Gaga has spent the past five years seemingly apprehensive about her own pop star acumen, dividing her career instead into acting, makeup and pharmaceuticals, and quietly distancing herself from the thing that made her famous. Perhaps it’s because, during her early, most outrageous years, she was mocked and dubbed a musical anarchist – and not always in the good way – for her crude and exposing performance style (cite: her legacy-defining 2009 “Paparazzi” performance at the MTV VMAs). 

Yet that is where she has always been most comfortable, as a garishly OTT storyteller. In returning to that headspace with Mayhem, and following the widespread praise it received, Gaga once again appears at ease to tearing up the pop rule book, and travelling her own whimsical path (by boat, it seems). 

In a world where creativity is being replaced by miserable AI slop and stifled by excessive censorship, Gaga’s Mayhem Ball is a reminder that sometimes, the very best art can only come from the gloriously strange brain of a 39-year-old Italian New Yorker. 

★★★★★

Lady Gaga is touring The Mayhem Ball until April 2026. Tickets available now.

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