Lily Allen ProfileThe Lily Allen Performs West End Girl tour kicked off in Brisbane last night, which was the West Londoner’s first show in Australia in seven years. The 14-track record was performed with Lily Allen’s signature frankness and satire, but was eclipsed by a deeper, broken undercurrent of pain.
Allen wore vintage tailored outfits, and the stage was a boudoir setting that mirrored the confines of her apartment where she unravelled in her semi-autobiographical record of events that unfolded some five years ago.
Allen has been touring the show since April, hitting the UK, US and Canada, but sadly, our friends across the pond were deprived the show, with the singer pulling out of her Auckland show earlier this week due to a viral infection.
West End Girl is one of the purest examples of how a concept album can be a remarkable format for storytelling, especially paired with Allen’s melodic talk-singing style, leaving nothing to the imagination. Last night’s show really could have been a one-woman show on the West End, complete with a decadent green velvet curtain and a pink neon West End Girl sign that lit up before Allen stepped out from the curtain and into a follow-spotlight.
There is no reading between the lines for Allen, with the scathing tell-all documenting a frame-by-frame account of her marriage breakdown with David Harbour. The heartbreaking events that made West End Girl a critical success all began with Allen accepting the lead in a play on West End in 2021.
Giving further credence to the West End performance style show, Allen did not engage with the audience at all, apart from a brief thank you to the Brisbane audience accompanied by a bow and someone presenting her a bouquet of flowers.
It speaks to the gravitas of the show that we did not feel underserved in the slightest by the lack of interaction, as we were on the edge of our seats despite knowing at all times what was coming next as Allen played the 14-track record in chronological order.
When first released one year ago to the day, it quickly became an anthem for heartbreak and shit men, but seeing Allen perform in person, we were struck by just how disorienting and sad these events were, and it felt less empowering than it did when she took back control with the release of the album a year ago.
The design was built upon as the show unfolded, starting with Allen sitting on the edge of the stage taking that now iconic phone call at the end of West End Girl, where we hear the one-sided conversation of Harbour asking for an open relationship. We then see Allen draped on a period-style sofa for Sleepwalking before she unzips and slips out of her first outfit of the show to see her in pantyhose and a pink silk teddy, which the audience went wild for, notably so when she sang “I know you’ve made me your Madonna, I want to be your whore” with her legs spread.
At the end of the song, a bed and a fridge became visible on the stage, with Allen picking up reading glasses and a robe from the bed and putting them on for Tennis. Allen paused and looked to the audience each time to ask, “Who is Madelaine?” Madeline was a bouncier track, and Allen even performed the American Madeline role, including her alleged speech to Lily about her involvement and knowledge of the relationship between her and Harbour.
Relapse was delivered with fast-paced, scattered lighting and performance from Allen as she paced her apartment and flung her Birkin bag onto the bed and then the floor as she scrambled to bring pill bottles out.
We feel her unravelling with the knowledge of her marriage now open and her lack of visibility over the events, which is the perfect segue for the next song Pussy Palace, which began with visuals of New York and the subway as she begins the song documenting being stuck on the F Train and then hurrying to her home, already stressed and finding evidence suggesting these meetups were happening in her home.
We see Allen picking up bags off the floor of the stage and pulling out dildos, lingerie, bondage, and other paraphernalia as she throws them to the side in disgust.
For 4chan Stan, Allen wore a pink apron with CUCK written on the front for this slower track and mostly sang it standing at the microphone. There were cheers that rang out all over the packed arena when we saw the apron, and Allen even put her hands under the word and smiled to really underscore her feelings.
Nonmonogamummy followed (with Specialist Moss), which was a dancey track, and we see Allen more upbeat as she skipped around the stage in her go-go girl-looking outfit of white leather hot pants and a lilac, cropped cardigan sweater and white leather go-go boots.
If the West End Girl album was a compilation of the stages of grief, then her final two tracks, Let You Win and Fruityloop, were very much the acceptance stage. Lamenting the impact on her children, her immigration status and the lives they had built in New York, Allen doesn’t have a single bullet to this pain. She performed these heart-wrenching songs with clarity, defeat, and what seemed to be a genuine will to put this behind her. Allen ended the show to a full standing ovation and deafening cheer.
Allen continues her tour in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, where she will end this campaign of heartbreak and her biggest tour of her career.
