Lily Allen reclaims the stage, unvarnished and unbound

This is Allen 2.0, and she is firmly in charge of the narrative.

It’s an unnervingly warm March weekend. Pub gardens are already overspilling with patrons, in the most British way possible, bringing with them an anxious excitement for the faint vibrations of a now not-so-distant festival season. “Sun is in the sky / oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else,” Allen once surmised on a single, “LDN”, from her debut album, and it is a sentiment that has never felt more apt as the crowds gather for her three nights headlining the Palladium.

The track itself, however, is one that cunningly inverts expectations to detail the grotesque underbelly of the city from “al fresco” picnics in smoggy parks, thieves, and “crack whores”. From its very inception, in fact, Allen’s artistic voice has always promoted gritty honesty over glamorous polish. She has adopted the mantle as a mouthpiece for the wronged and the gauche, luxuriating in the melodrama of premature ejaculation on “Not Fair,” and confronting the racists and homophobics on “Fuck You”. Her back catalogue has become something of a musical ‘picky bits’ — a British tapas of teardowns.

Whilst some may have been disheartened that she doesn’t sing these hits on the West End Girl tour, she encourages a karaoke-style singalong of the roster in the first act of the show. The crowd effervesce as one rousing chorus, spitting her signature sarcastic lyrics back at the group of cellists, the affectionately-coined Dallas Minor Trio, who classicise the tracks.

The idea is pulled off in pure Allen-style, with a knowing wink and a nudge at the juxtaposition of her bolshy lyrics (“you were fucking that girl next door”) being set to the serenity of strings. Yes it was messy, chanting pub fare, but so it should be; these songs were intended to be sung with a beer in hand and unrelenting finger guns. This proves a microcosm of the wider setting of the show in the Palladium, melding the formality of an all-seated theatre with Allen’s notoriously informal diatribes.

The venue choice, in the heart of London’s West End, is also a pleasingly self-referential touch, with her lead role in 2:22: A Ghost Story providing a critical entry point to her account of the dissolution of her marriage to David Harbour (Stranger Things). The only detraction is that the fully seated auditorium leads to what feels at times like a game of musical chairs rippling through the crowd, with pockets of people standing up and sitting back down in awkward asynchronicity throughout her performance.

Allen takes to the stage for the second act, walking through the tumult already laid bare on West End Girl in devastatingly intimate detail as a piece of maximalist performance art. The staging is built and flies off stage much akin to a play, transitioning between her London hotel room, and Harbour’s New York bachelor pad. The made-up bedrooms on stage become physical manifestations of her entrapment. The outfit choices also reflect her stark grievances and revelations, entering the stage in a pink and prim two-piece before stripping down to undergarments, and having to build herself back up again.

With a very familiar running order the show is fully digestible at each turn. Fans know the exact times that they can play, yelling “hang up!”, “fuck him!”, and “he doesn’t respect you!” during her fake phone call with her husband. They also know when to slow and witness the emotional tug of the music, from “Relapse” about trying to resist falling back on her sobriety, to “Just Enough”, unfurling Allen’s fears he has gotten another woman pregnant whilst they were “talking about vasectomies”.

Unlike conventional pop tours of late which are prioritising surprise additions to the setlist (Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour), special guests (Role Model’s “Sally”) and crowd interaction (Sabrina Carpenter’s “Juno” arrest; Charli XCX’s “Apple”), this leaves little room for secrets or spontaneity on stage. Whilst it was the candid truth and unexpected detail in Allen’s stream of consciousness that made the album such a sensation in October, the tour-turned-stageshow proves just as gripping in its considered and deliberate portrayal of events.

To counteract any potential monotony, Allen incorporates various gags into the set design. Whether suffocating herself in enlarged receipts of her husband’s affair, digging through his man bag of sex toys, or different things jumping out of her fridge each time she opens it, including a pair of legs, these were notable moments of intrigue and delight from the crowd (even if what I was really hoping would pop out were three more choruses of “Dallas Major”).

In playing the album in full Allen is also somewhat victim to the performance following the same peaks and troughs as the recorded product. Whilst the storyline builds across its first twelve tracks and the tension coils ever tighter between fan favourites “Tennis”, “Madeline”, and “Beg For Me”, the final two tracks “Let You W/In” and “Fruityloop” end the performance with a rather contained sigh.

So much of the concept behind this show is baked in performing in intimate, theatrical venues, and the shorter runtime alongside the absence of larger catalogue hits feel more forgivable because of it. It will be interesting to see how this tour fares as Allen sets up to tackle festival performances and a run at the O2 this summer, but it’s safe to say the West End Girl found a perfect home at the Palladium.

Setlist

Dallas Minor Trio
"The Fear"
"LDN"
"Not Fair"
"22"
"Alfie"
"Who’d Have Known"
"Hard Out Here"
"Smile"
"Fuck You"

Lily Allen
"West End Girl"
"Ruminating"
"Sleepwalking"
"Tennis"
"Madeline"
"Relapse"
"Pussy Palace"
"4chan Stan"
"Nonmonogamummy"
"Just Enough"
"Dallas Major"
"Beg For Me"
"Let You W/In"
"Fruityloop"