A 40-foot animatronic sea monster, 15 costume changes and a grand piano burning to pieces in the middle of the stage - you certainly get what you pay for at a Lady Gaga concert.
The 23-year-old pop phenomenon played the first night of her self-styled "electro opera" at the O2 in London this weekend.
Its a huge ambitious, fantasticly loud show, spread over four acts and held together by a "narrative" about Gaga and her friends trying to get to a party.
The show opened with Dance in the Dark - with Gaga on a set she appeared to have borrowed from a Gotham City production of West Side Story.
Dressed in a futuristic, angular, glitterball suit, she descended the fire escape and teased the audience with a snippet of a new song, Glitter and Grease.
Everything exploded when she sang Just Dance, her first UK number one, and the first big sing-along of the night - From there, the pace never let up.
A pounding Love Game was performed inside a New York subway carriage, while the ballad Brown Eyes saw Gaga hammering the life out of a steampunk-inspired grand piano with the audience singing along. The most moving moments of the night came when she sat behind the piano and played the emotional Speechless, a song she wrote for her father - "about how he loves Johnny Walker just a little bit more than he loves me."-It was a tender performance.
From here we had the fish creature - a multi-limbed, pneumatically-operated beast from the depths of the sea that appeared for just three minutes, mauling Lady Gaga as she attempted to perform Paparazzi! Gaga survived the attack with just enough energy for a stomping, full-hearted rendition of Bad Romance, which sent the audience chanting "Ga, ga, ooh-la-la"all the way home!
For more information on the additional dates click here or on the O2 website.
