Lady Gaga brings her Mayhem Ball to the Chase Center

Packed with performance bravura, Gothic style and panache with a bit of whimsy, Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball packed about 19,000 joyous fans into the Chase Center on July 22 for the first of three shows this week.

This is the second U.S. run of her official Mayhem Ball tour, although an earlier different version premiered at Coachella a few months back. The tour continued to Brazil, Mexico City and Asia for an international tour before returning to the U.S. where it premiered in Las Vegas last week.

By now, the show is completely polished, with more than two hours of musical entertainment, including a lot of projections, pyrotechnics, brilliant dancing, and rousing musicianship.

As anyone who seen the short clips from the tour online knows, there’s a definite sense of style in the Mayhem Ball, reminiscent of Hammer films, silent horror classics like FW Murneau’s “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” as well as some amusing use of skulls of various sizes.

The overall theme shares a duality of Gaga’s Id and Ego, a red queen and a white queen battling for dominance. But while woven throughout the concert, it was sometimes abandoned to allow Lady Gaga to simply sing some of her classic pop hits like “Born This Way,” as well as some plaintive ballads that were also audience favorites. Amid all the showmanship, Gaga’s voice was in top form.

Divided into multiple acts, the show was already entertaining before she took the stage. Fans were allowed to text notes about coming out, becoming fans, and being trans. There was even a same-sex marriage proposal. Let’s hope that worked out better than the Coldplay Kiss-Cam.

Then Gaga herself was seen on a huge projected loop image as she scribbled away on a red feather fan, an iconic prop for “Scheiße” later in the show. As with most songs, thousands of bracelets given to audience members lit up in various colors and patterns coordinated with the lighting.

The opening medley was probably the best moment in the show, starting with “Bloody Mary,” into “Abracadabra” and closing with “Judas,” all with Gaga atop a giant hoop skirt with levels of dancers crawling about on a monkey bar cage/grid below her, until she was lowered, then emerged from the hoop/cage.

Swiftly transitioning into different costumes for songs like “Garden of Eden,” she even strummed a guitar in one of many remixed versions made for the concert.

The massive set with projections took on an operatic aspect, just like the preshow music. The extended runway gave Gaga and her terrific dancers (two dozen?) plenty of space to work the catwalk in between her multiple costume changes.

While the Coachella and Rio versions of “Pokerface” included a fully illuminated chessboard and multiple ‘fatalities’ through dance, the thinner runway version on the new concert stage still fulfilled the song’s intensity with terrific under-lighting of the runway as the dancers stomped across it.

Whimsical and unusual takes on mortality were explored in a series of Act II songs, including “Disease” and “Perfect Celebrity,” which Gaga performed in a giant sandbox with several skull-faced female dancers, shot from above by camera operators. She even wrestled with her doppelgänger the Red Queen for a bit before escaping.

Gaga continued to expand her parameters of performance as her metallic costume and crutches (possibly referencing the robot Hel in “Metropolis,” as well as her real-life physical struggles) were accentuated by a gargantuan flowing white cape of fabric, which in the second verse of “Paparazzi” turned into a rainbow effect of colors.

After she performed a welcome return of "Disco Stick," “Love Games,” Alejandro,” “The Beast,” and another dance break (one male dancer spun in a septuple pirouette!), a giant skull was hauled out for Act III’s “Killah” and “Zombieboy.” The male dancers in hunched-shoulder costumes resembled something out of a Scooby-Doo episode. While giant props are a hoot, I prefer the Coachella and “SNL” versions of “Killah” that gave us a look at perpetually shirtless cutie-pie drummer Tosh Peterson.

Act IV served as a bit of a variety pack; “Shadow of a Man,” “Kill for Love,” the older 2007 song “Summerboy,” and a bouncy jump in tempo for “Born This Way.”

At a certain point towards the end, Gaga transformed her “A Star is Born” ballad “Shallow” into a clear homage to the musical “Phantom of the Opera” by gracefully floating back-and-forth in a tiny boat on the fog-infused runway with her masked red queen nemesis.

A piano ballad of “Die With a Smile” followed, before which Gaga took a few minutes to thank her fans. She recalled her early gigs in San Francisco, and how Bay Area fans understood her.

“I was touring clubs all over the world," said Gaga. "And some places that I went, they just didn’t understand me. But not here. When I came here to San Francisco, I was accepted and I was embraced.” She did fail to mention having headlined San Francisco Pride in 2007.

It’s become a standard for Gaga to trot through the front level barriers of the crowd during the song “Vanish Into You” as she posed briefly for photos, signed programs and accepted black flower bouquets, like the ones that she almost regularly now seems to receive. Gaga and her Red Queen seemed to finally come to an accord as she shared the bouquet.

Before things got too slow, the company closed out with a finale of “Bad Romance” with the eccentric staging that has continued since the beginning of the show; plague-era masked medieval surgeons try to operate on her, until she pops up on a gurney and proceeds to dance in the white costumes for the finale, feathery claws flying. We could actually feel the heat from the bursts of flame. Raw-raw, ooh la la!

But that’s not all, as fans know. After switching to street clothes, Gaga started performing “How Bad Do U Want Me” from backstage, into a roving camera, having wiped her make-up to perform one last number. Her T-shirt was a tribute to Metal rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, who died a few days ago. And Gaga, her dancers and band members, took their bows as Osbourne’s song “Crazy Train” played.

All in all, it was a thrilling, slightly exhausting evening, packed with nearly every song you’d want to hear live. Notably missing was the mega-hit “Telephone.” But perhaps that would be considered a bit off-theme. Who knows?

Another interesting and graceful aspect of the show were the projected credits for the multiple dancers, designers, choreographers, stagehands, and others, showing that, although directed by Lady Gaga, this truly is a group effort.

Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball’s additional Chase Center shows are July 24 and 26, 8pm; $200 and up.

The Mayhem Ball will be in Los Angeles July 28 & 29, and August 1 & 2 at the Kia Forum.
Seattle, New York, Miami and other U.S cities follow. Her European tour starts Sept. 29 in London.

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