Lily Allen defends length of West End Girl shows: ‘I don’t want anyone to feel ripped off’ | Lily Allen
Lily Allen has defended the live tour of her latest album West End Girl after fans complained they were short-changed by 55-minute shows with no crowd interaction.
Allen is currently on the UK leg of the album’s world tour, inspired by her divorce from actor David Harbour. At the show, he is seen performing the entire 45-minute album without speaking to the crowd or performing any of his back catalogue.
The singer likened the show to theater rather than a traditional concert. telling Elle last year “It will be more like a Broadway-like one-woman show, with really interesting set design. There will be no band and no dancers.”
However, some fans complain that the 55-minute show is too short to justify the ticket prices. Tickets for their shows at London’s O2 Arena cost around £100, while tickets for the upcoming Australian leg range from $110 to $400 for VIP packages.
One attendee of the first O2 Arena show wrote: “I know it says ‘Lily Allen portrays West End Girl’ but it doesn’t say ‘Lily Allen ONLY portrays West End Girl’.” in a two star review Published on Ticketmaster. “A show of maybe an hour and 10 minutes, with long costume changes in between and no speaking, cost me £100 per ticket… This has to be the shortest and least value for money gig I have ever attended.”
another one described it as “disappointing”He adds: “Although his performance was excellent. He was on stage for less than an hour. He could have sung some of his old songs himself. If I had known this before, I would not have bought the expensive tickets.”
Critics and fans were also divided over Allen’s decision not to appear in the first half of his own show; instead the crowd was encouraged to sing karaoke-style while the string ensemble played 10 of his old hits.
Journalist Rupert Hawksley He shared his critical review of the O2 Arena show on Sunday on XThis prompted Allen to respond.
“Lily Allen at The O2. No support act, came on stage at 9.10pm, all wrapped up at 10pm, not a word to the audience, £86 [US$114, AU$165] to dwell among the gods,” Hawksley wrote.
He wrote that although Allen’s performance was “wonderful”, “it can’t be right to charge that much for an hour late on a Sunday night.”
Allen responded directlyhe said the show was “as always advertised”.
“It’s my artistic choice not to talk to the audience, it helps with fourth wall storytelling. Most people find it effective,” he wrote.
At the show Hawksley attended, she said she was late on stage because “my tights were stuck on the stairs and I had to change them.”
“I don’t want anyone to feel ripped off,” he added. “Everyone on this tour is working really hard to give people the best show we can, and I’m extremely proud of that.”
In response to Allen, Hawksley acknowledged that the show was delivered as advertised but wrote: “But no support acts, even the ‘thank you so much for coming’ was a bit odd.”
Allen joked in response: “I’ll happily admit I’m a little weird, though.”
The tour initially launched in intimate theaters across the UK, but more dates were added to larger venues including arenas. Allen will travel to the US in September, then to Australia and New Zealand in October and November, where he will play only large venues.
Some fans online even encourage others to skip the first half, while the string ensemble Dallas Minor Trio, named after one of his songs, plays instrumental covers of his back catalogue.
“Performing hits like this might be cute as a 10-minute introduction, but the entire 45-minute first half of a highly anticipated comeback suggests it risks testing the audience’s patience, a compromise between committing to a full-album show and avoiding accusations of not playing the hits,” critic Claire Biddles wrote in a two-star review of the tour’s opening night in March for the Guardian.
But other fans and critics agree that Allen frames his tour as theater. Diversity gave it its name “it’s a fascinating, even thrilling exercise in emotional world-building” and adds: “it couldn’t have been more of a piece of theater if he’d booked Walter Kerr for six weeks.”
