The enigma that is Pink is becoming harder to fathom. In 2002’s visit to the very same venue she confronted thousands of young girls waving teddy bears with a stripped down show, basically just her and a band. It was, after a slightly shaky start, a marvellous night. This time round, while the hardcore punk crowd that she has been courting are conspicuous by their absence, the audience is a slightly more mixed affair – the neon deely boppers still flash in the darkness and the soft toys rain down on the stage. Pink’s response is to give them something approaching a pop show.
Lowered onto the stage to the strains of ‘There You Go’, yes from that R&B period that she has latterly disowned, the accompanying dancers act out some bizarre scene from the Wild West. It’s followed by some equally odd messing around with mirrors and three identikit Pinks sporting massive coloured mohicans. Everything, including the bitchy Christina put down at the end of ‘Lady Marmalade’ is so obviously choreographed, so scripted that she may well have read her ‘Hello Dublin’ speech off a cue card. You wonder what her new found cohorts in Rancid would make of it all. Fortunately she returns from the first of several costume changes (never a good sign) with a few bars of Twisted Sister’s ‘I Wanna Rock’ and matters take a sharp upturn.
The connection between singer, band and audience kicks in and ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’ and ‘Just Like A Pill’ send the place nuts, while ‘Family Portrait’ displays a fine voice. For the rest of the evening we lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. It soon becomes clear that whenever the dancers appear the gig will take a nosedive. Some poor sod is pulled from the audience and strapped to a chair. They pole dance to ‘God Is A DJ’ before indulging in some faux lesbian wranglings. For some reason a lovely acoustic Janis Joplin medley is followed by the playing of Josh Wink’s techno classic ‘Higher State Of Consciousness’.
The good bits, when Pink plays it simple and just kicks back with her musicians, are to be treasured, but unfortunately it’s the sub-Madonna theatrics that stick in the mind. Only at the very end does the madness make some sort of sense. Pushed through the unsuspecting crowd in a flight case, she appears at the back of the hall before making a chaotic journey back to the stage while the band play Guns N’ Roses ‘Welcome To The Jungle’. Then those bloody dancers reappear and ‘Get This Party Started’ brings the party to an end, Pink herself performing some breathtaking acrobatics while hanging upside down from the ceiling.
The twin worlds of Pink the pop star and the punk rock princess collided here tonight and made awkward bedfellows. The outcome of which one will win out is still in the balance.