It's likely that Latin star Ricky Martin's performance will be the biggest live show we'll see this year. Entertainment editor RUSSELL BAILLIE went to Toronto for a preview.
Baby, it's cold outside. Though Toronto is thawing from winter, on this early Saturday night a freezing wind whips off Lake Ontario, a blast icy enough to chill one to the bon-bons.
It squalls across the surrounds of the city's adjoining landmarks, the CN Tower and Skydome where thousands scurry past hotdog sellers and ticket scalpers (one with the sales pitch: "Get your Ricky tickeys here") towards the the doors of the giant stadium.
Inside the colosseum, its huge sliding roof closed to the elements, the wind is replaced by a buzz of anticipation and percolating hormones. They're mostly, but not exclusively, female. There are some very happy groups of chaps in the stadium bars before showtime.
All that frisson is enough to raise the room temperature. And it's a very big room.
But half a football field - and all the multi-storey seating you can wrap around it - is what's required. For tonight 25,000 have paid to bask in that lighthouse smile, that cleft chin, that oddly even caramel tan and - lest we forget - those polished pants ... ladies and gentleman Ricky Martin, the conquistador of pop.
Martin became the life of the pre-millennial party with hit-of-99 Livin' La Vida Loca and his self-titled fifth album, also his English language debut.
If that risked the label of "one-hit wonder" it might be best remembered that the Anglo world is just the latest blip on his sales graph. The Puerto Rican 28-year-old had already sold 15 million sung-in-Spanish albums in those parts of globe for which we need subtitles.
He's been a star for some time, having started out young in Puerto Rican boy band Menudo before heading to Broadway and television.
All of which explains why Martin's show is a big 'un, the sort of production you'd expect from pop's superstar division. It's one which runs a fine line between lavish showmanship and extravagant gestures to convince us that he's deep, humble, vulnerable, sensitive, and oh-so-appreciative of all the attention.
Ricky, it seems, wants to show us he's not just a pretty face atop tight trousers at the front of a global conga line. But this can get unintentionally amusing, like when he repeatedly and earnestly asks us to "leave your egos outside the door" (what? In this weather?).
Or when he cites Venezuelan revolutionary Simon Bolivar, telling the crowd that tonight "we are uniting the Americas" (which gets a cheer despite the probable reluctance for this relatively untroubled part of the continent to join Martin's grand political vision).
Or when his spoken declarations introducing another of his ballads make him sound, with their talk of "denial" and his "heart of power," like a spurned Latin lover who's read too many self-help books.
Enough waffle, you might think, to really drag things down. But it doesn't. Mainly because three-quarters of the rest of the performance is a song and dance spectacular of infectious energy.
Martin, leading a large band and dance troupe across his multi-tiered hydraulic wonder of a stage (all lifts and fireman's poles), works hard for the money. He can throw quite a party.
He's even brave enough to lead off with Livin' La Vida Loca rather than work up to it.
It comes after a video screen intro where we first see Ricky lying in bed (alone, it must be said) in some very nice pyjamas (by tour sponsor Armani probably) before heading to the bathroom to splash water on his face (in slow motion) while staring meaningfully into the mirror (that acting experience on soap General Hospital hasn't gone to waste, obviously).
Soon he's speeding off in a white Mustang convertible pursued by paparazzi, but comes a cropper with a fire hydrant and escapes into a club full of sizzling senoritas ... Bam! There he is on stage singing and dancing atop the hood of the rotating car, its headlights no match for Martin's high-beam stage presence.
A dancer, not quite dressed for local conditions in her fringed bikini, pops out of the trunk and joins the mass cavorting while Martin substitutes "Toronto" in the song's "woke up in New York City" line to a predictable cheer.
And as he gyrates upon the car-top at the front of a stage resplendent in discotheque chrome, it's as if Martin has gone back in time to steal the mojo of the young John Travolta.
But after that hit what's left? Quite a bit actually - 90 minutes plus of Martin's hybrid music from his current album and its predecessors. Which means quite a lot of instantly infectious, creakingly obvious dancepop running on salsa, samba and mambo rhythms blown up to stadium dimensions.
It's not out to win any prizes for authenticity or longevity. But musically, the show is at its best - and that's very good - when it's at its most Latinesque. That's also when Martin seems happy to just be the singer in his brass-swingin', high-steppin' band who are kept very much in the foreground throughout.
On mid-set songs like Por Arriba, Por Abajo (from his fourth album Vuelve), Martin delivers a mass aerobics session to its shoutalong chorus and there's frequent similar outbreaks of stimulating syncopation throughout.
Then there's the ballads: A Private Emotion seems anything but with its campy high dramatics which has a touch of the Phantom of the Opera about it; Vuelve starts off in Jose Feliciano territory before turning pure Julio; and later, during the Bryan Adams-like I am Made of You, Martin ascends heavenwards in a flying saucer contraption, his arms outstretched in a messianic pose. So much for checking egos at the door.
But that alien abduction manoeuvre signals we're on the home straight.
Martin returns in fresh leather trousers for Shake Your Bon Bon, which he does to the delight of the front rows in the concert's most Chippendale moment, complete with Latin percussion solo.
The encores begin with another ballad which Martin sings while lolling about a couch in his Indian-influenced casual wear (to go with the song's touch of sitar).
Then aptly for this sports venue, the finale is a rousing and extended La Copa De La Vida, Martin's official anthem for soccer's 1998 World Cup, and the song which prepared the way for his 1999 breakthrough.
It's a whizzbang finish, a carnival of bungi-jumping dancers, confetti cannons and a neverending chorus that the happy throng carry on singing outside in the cold: "Ole, ole ole ..."
No, not much of a Spanish lesson is Ricky Martin. A real fun show though.
*Ricky Martin plays Auckland's Ericsson Stadium on Saturday October 14. Tickets on sale at Ticketek today from 10 am.
Mission to Martin
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