Review: Adele’s Las Vegas show is as great as anything I have ever seen on stage

Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick gives Adele's "Weekends with Adele" Residency Opening five stars. Photo / Getty Images

REVIEW:

Well, Adele made it to Las Vegas. And it was worth the wait.

Intimate but spectacular, eccentric yet slick and richly emotional, the 34-year-old superstar’s long-delayed Caesars Palace debut was everything anyone could have hoped for. And maybe a little bit more.

From a stripped-back piano and vocal opening focusing tightly on the talent of the singer and the quality of her song craft, to a stormy inferno in which Adele’s piano burst into flames, this was an absolutely blockbusting, heart-soaring show packed with personality.

It was genuinely as great as anything I have ever seen on stage, a dazzling production that engaged the senses whilst never distracting from the human core of the music.

But then, superstars don’t come much more human than Adele. “I’m f---ing s---ing myself!” she declared in the middle of forlorn opening ballad “Hello”, then just carried on with all the sophisticated nuance of a classic torch singer lost in heartbreak. You can take the girl out of “norf London” (as she gleefully pronounced it), but you can’t take “norf London” out of the girl.

Adele performs with a flaming piano during the "Weekends with Adele" Residency Opening at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo / Getty Images

And her fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s really mad to be from Tottenham and be in Las Vegas!” she tearfully exclaimed during one of many long, emotional speeches. Adele spoke for almost a third of the 90-minute show, even taking a long walkabout to chat with members of the 4000-strong audience, all the while peppering her rambling monologues with ripe expletives. She surprisingly revealed that she had actually come very close to cancelling her opening night a second time, due to ill health. Or, as Adele put it, “I was sick as a f---ing dog all week!”

She was repeatedly apologetic about the chaotic last-minute cancellation of her original shows in January. “I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming back,” she blubbed. “It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had, but the best decision I’ve ever made.” On this evidence, it would be hard to argue with her.

The discarded plans had called for Adele to open her show suspended in a harness, descending from the Colosseum ceiling to walk across a 400-gallon (1500 litre) indoor lake whilst a 60-piece male voice choir struck up the chorus of James Bond theme “Skyfall”. Having experienced a crisis of faith in the whole over-the-top production style, she sacked her creative team and hired British firm Stufish to help develop a new show that kept music front and centre.

Adele's new gig has been described as an absolutely blockbusting, heart-soaring show packed with personality. Photo / Getty Images

Adele was on stage almost the whole time, in a flowing black gown, with no costume changes, accompanied by six musicians, three backing singers and (as it was spine-tinglingly revealed during a second half “Skyfall”) a 24-piece string section.

There was something deceptively old-fashioned about the set-up, but in truth there was a lot of intricate action going on throughout, with shifting stage parts and increasingly mind-boggling wraparound visuals to infuse narrative and momentum. There was even a water feature, albeit just a small pool for the piano to sink into during “Set Fire to the Rain”. The main waterworks were Adele’s tears, as she became overwhelmed with emotion every time the crowd picked up a chorus and sang it back to her. “You’re gonna make me perform my whole show with runny makeup,” she wailed.

Never mind the naysayers, there’s a reason Adele has become the biggest-selling singer of our times, and it is because she has range, tone, control, power and the ability to lose herself in the emotion of the songs she writes about universal experiences of love and loss.

This is a show that puts all of that at its centre, then adds a bit of Vegas magic. Adele has plucked triumph from disaster. Did we ever doubt she would?