Katy Perry, Glasgow review: 'like a pop Tinkerbell'

Katy Perry, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★★

Katy Perry playing in Glasgow on a full moon - what could possibly go wrong? Despite an abundance of moving parts and running it tight on curfew, the Lifetimes tour passed off in fine style, which is to say with drilled precision from star, band and an octet of dancers but also a handful of typical Perry extemporisations. Who knows if even she grasped the staging concept, which appeared to involve Perry as sci-fi avatar bulldozing her way through the levels of a video game on a humanity-saving mission?

Does her music actually have life-saving properties? Young cancer survivor Ethan, plucked from the crowd to duet on his favourite Perry song, Double Rainbow, might say so. During the same lengthy audience interaction interlude, Perry also blessed an expectant mother and playfully offered some marriage counselling to a wife whose husband was offering to elope with the singer.

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These unscripted human touches were sweet but also a distraction from the rigorous pop theatre unfolding on (and above) a stage shaped like an infinity loop. Perry manifested like the cyborg from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to dance with her ghostbusting dancers on her last great single, Chained to the Rhythm, while her early hits, from California Gurls to I Kissed a Girl, were dispatched in one cutesy batch.

For her next trick, she glided around on a zipwire like a pop Tinkerbell over Alice in Wonderland-like flora and there was further Katy play as she did battle with boutique versions of the Dune sandworms during E.T. It’s a lot to keep up with though Perry - “nearly 41 and f***ing fabulous” - was all over her blur of pop culture references and reached the encore flying round on some winged creature like Wonder Woman to Roar and communing relatively simply with the crowd on the exultant Firework.

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