Dua Lipa, Royal Albert Hall review: Even Elton John can’t upstage a night that has no right to work this well

The pop star is accompanied by a full 53-piece orchestra as she rebuilds London’s grand concert hall in her image

Elton John joining Dua Lipa onstage at the Royal Albert Hall (Ben Gibson)

Dua Lipa is 10 months shy of 30; if she lives to be 100, I doubt she’ll ever play a venue quite as spectacular as this again. The effect is palpable long before the English-Albanian disco-pop sensation sets foot on stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which has been transformed into a lavish in-the-round arena for the night. A looping, custom-built walkway cuts through the center of the venue, weaving around Lipa’s collaborators for the evening – the 53-piece Heritage Orchestra, a 14-person choir, and seven-person band. As a sight, it’s nothing short of breathtaking.

You could argue that it’s a grandeur befitting the ongoing anointment of Lipa as a Big Musical Deal; in the past few years, there have been No 1 hits, major industry awards, and, in June, a headline slot at Glastonbury Festival. Tonight, though, is something precariously new. Gone are the kinetic dance numbers that have formed the backbone of Lipa’s live show. “It’s a show unlike any other I’ve done before,” Lipa informs the crowd (as if they couldn’t tell). “I don’t have my dancers with me; I have to say, I do miss them.” She’s half-joking, of course – but only half.

Newly black-haired and clad in an elegant Albert Hall-appropriate red dress, Lipa seems a little overwhelmed with the scale of the setting. Throughout the medleyed opening numbers – “End of an Era” and the propulsive “Houdini”, from her recent third album Radical Optimism – the muddy fullness of the orchestra threatens to drown out her voice. There’s something quite static about the whole presentation, too. Lipa tries to make the most of the space, occasionally striding along the walkway, and at one point standing atop a piano. But she spends much of the night standing at its centre, performing some modest dance moves with a kind of careful stiffness. Far more dynamic is Ben Foster, conducting the orchestra with a vengeance, and the numerous camera rigs gliding around and above the stage.

Lipa’s song’s are designed to animate, but the Albert Hall isn’t really a forum for dancing; the crowd do their best nonetheless. There are moments that want for a more subdued vibe – a soulful cover of Cleo Sol’s “Sunshine” is punctured by whoops and an obnoxious “Get it, girl!”. At times, the orchestration feels like a bit of a counter-productive gimmick – for every snappy crescendo, or satisfying glissando of the strings, there are a dozen bars of gluttonous noise that would, on record, surely provoke claims of “overproduction”. It’s also hard to distinguish the various moving parts: I struggle to pick out the choir whatsoever.

But when it works, it really works. Lipa’s voice grows into the evening, and really shines on tracks such as the soaring “Falling Forever”, another Radical Optimism cut. As the set rollicks towards its climax, you can’t help but get swept along. For a while, I wonder if a full-sized orchestra was not in fact what has been missing from Lipa’s whole live act all along. As Elton John joins Lipa onstage for the encore – for a rendition of the boppy mash-up collab “Cold Heart” – the mood is triumphant. He takes a couple of bars to find his pitch, but John, sat down for the performance, is in solid voice here. His appearance is a sign, perhaps, of the weight of the occasion: no such guest spot materialised during Lipa’s Pyramid Stage set (nor, for that matter, did Lipa grace his headline set the year before).

Dua Lipa on stage at the Royal Albert Hall (Lloyd W)

A stop-the-presses cameo such as this threatens, for a second, to derail the evening. How are you supposed to top an appearance from the Rocket Man himself? But Lipa, now dressed in snazzy black, finds a way, bringing on her backing dancers for an exuberant rendition of “Dance The Night”, her contribution to last year’s Barbie soundtrack, never before performed live. As confetti rains down from the ceiling to the sound of a lushly orchestrated “Don’t Stop Now”, the Albert Hall finally seems like Lipa’s stage. Against the odds, and maybe even good sense, she has made it work.