Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff and touring
Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite ? Les Folies tour, which arrived in Britain with two dates in Cardiff last weekend before taking up a five-night residency at London's O2 next month, is billed as one of the most extravagant pop spectacles ever staged.
With a staging team borrowed from Disneyland and production costs of an estimated �15m, it's fair to say that the tour is making no attempt to nod to the current global mood of economic austerity.
The second show at Cardiff's 7,500-capacity Motorpoint Arena was far from sold out, which may be understandable for a show charging a minimum of �65 per ticket to promote an album, last year's Aphrodite, that was little more than serviceable.
Yet there is no denying the scale of the production. From the moment Minogue rises from the stage reclining in a golden conch shell in a tableau based on Botticelli's Birth of Venus, it's evident that understatement is not on the menu tonight.
Kylie's career has never been based on gritty realism but this latest production, themed loosely around Greek mythology, opens up new frontiers in high camp. The stage is a constant riot of gyrating, scantily clad gladiators and centurions. After they have pulled Minogue through the arena in a golden chariot, she croons her hit Illusion atop a winged Pegasus as if fleshing out a pop show choreographed by Cecil B DeMille.
Minogue's vertiginous costumes, courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana, may be relatively tame in a pop couture world dominated by Lady Gaga, but jaws still drop as the diminutive 42-year-old dons a chainmail dress apparently modelled on Jane Fonda in Barbarella. Yet her coup de grace is the asymmetric Bacofoil ball gown, in which she coos Confide in Me and Can't Get You Out Of My Head: the latter tune inevitably transforms the cavernous venue into a heaving, raucous karaoke hen party.
It is oddly endearing, too, that nearly 25 years into her musical career, Kylie's voice remains a valiant squeak rather than an octave-scaling tour de force. After all this time, she still sounds like an actress singing.
The spectacular theatrics that power the show are a necessary distraction from the fact that Minogue's latest material is sleek, anonymous disco-pop that leaves no discernible after-taste. As Kylie soars 20ft over the crowd's heads on the back of a bare-chested angel as she sings Closer, it helps take the mind off the fact that it is not much of a song.
Yet it's better than what follows: a breathy rendition of the Eurythmics' execrable There Must Be an Angel. Kylie redeems herself with a spirited chug through oldie Better the Devil You Know, before the sultry For the Lovers triggers an acrobatic, aquatic climax.
It is unfortunate that mainstream America has never taken Minogue to its heart. On this flamboyant evidence, nobody is more ready for a Las Vegas residency.
Monday 28: SECC, Glasgow. Tickets: 0844 395 4000. Then touring
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