Review: Lady Gaga brings her over-the-top Chromatica Ball tour to Hershey

Lady Gaga did not come on stage dipped in a vat of bubbling chocolate, nor did she dress up as a candy bar.

That’s newsworthy because of the location of the only Pennsylvania stop on the pop superstar and high-fashion performance artist’s Chromatica Ball Tour. It played to a sold-out crowd of 30,000 on Sunday just down the way from Chocolatetown Road at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey. A Hershey Entertainment spokesperson said on Monday that it was the highest-grossing concert ever at the stadium, breaking the Rolling Stones’ 2005 record.

Instead of a sweet ode de chocolat, Gaga began the 2-hour, 10-minute show, which was divided into five sections broken up by video interludes that allowed time for transformative costume changes, with a more bitter taste.

The lights dimmed on a deliriously excited crowd, and a Bach fugue played. Gaga appeared atop what looked like a giant slab of concrete, encased in a sarcophagus dress designed by Gareth Pugh and inspired by an outfit David Bowie wore on Saturday Night Live in 1979.

She was imprisoned — symbolically at odds with herself, and the world — on a stage that was intentionally lit to look drab and gray, except for flames shooting into the sky. As the evening’s musical and visual journey began, the brutalist architectural design of the set, Gaga has said, intentionally means to force “a real savage and hard look at yourself, and what you’ve been through.”

Of course, it was also meant to be the first act of a celebration, with the Mother Monster finally getting to lead her fans out of the pandemic darkness on a tour originally meant to happen in 2020, when her dance floor-directed Chromatica album was released.

But before we go on, why was this Gaga spectacular happening in Hershey, rather than the fourth-largest market in the country, 100 miles to the southeast?

This is not a secondary market tour. Far from it: It’s included stops in London and Paris and is on its way to Tokyo and San Francisco. And while the crowd was plenty large in Hershey (with the traffic snarls to go with it), she’s playing bigger venues elsewhere, such as MetLife Stadium in North Jersey, where she drew 55,000.

No official word was given as to why Philadelphia is omitted, but the likely culprit is tour routing in a summer in which so many acts are making up for lost time.

To play a stadium in South Philly, a stadium has to be available, and the Phillies were at Citizens Bank Park on Sunday. (Next weekend, they’re gone, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are there.) And what about the Linc? German metal band Rammstein are there Wednesday, and their humongous fire-breathing stage takes four days to set up.

Back to the show: The songs for the Chromatica Ball’s over-the-top opening sequence — with a bleach blonde Gaga slowly being freed from her outfit, with dancers gyrating around her — were early big hits from the late ‘00s: “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” and “Poker Face.”

The first conveyed what’s so powerful about Gaga’s pull, which could be felt throughout the open-air horseshoe-shaped stadium. The space was filled up with a mostly female audience with significant queer representation and a wide age range, dotted with fashion-forward Little Monsters in sequins, heels, and brightly hued hair.

Gaga is the pop diva who embraces the grotesque and strange, who’s not afraid to makes herself ugly to embrace her deep, dark impulses, and invite everybody along for the ride, imperfections and all.

She can clean up nicely and sing the Great American Songbook with Tony Bennett when she chooses to, but this was not the evening for that. “I want your horror, I want your disease,” the singer born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta sang. “I want your drama, the touch of your hand, I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand.”

At Hershey, the inclusive conviviality was enhanced by a wholesome setting, with popcorn and cotton candy vendors roaming the crowd.

Gaga’s leather-studded look appeared later in a biker-chic set piece that looked like an homage to “Justify My Love”-era Madonna, whose impact Gaga doesn’t try to hide.

Other notable looks included an enormous poofy gold gown designed by her sister, Natali Germanotta, worn during Chromatica’s “Free Woman.” And my personal favorite was the Deadlotus Couture creation described as an “erotic beetle leotard,” accessorized with a horned headpiece that made her look like a futuristic pop star species of African antelope.

Gaga wore that outfit for a piano interlude, which included two songs from A Star Is Born, the 2018 film with Bradley Cooper that made her a movie star. The interlude allowed her to show out her powerful voice without her more-than-capable funk-pop band playing behind her and also use “Always Remember Us This Way” to frame a summer night in Hershey as a beautiful moment in time.

Along with “Born This Way,” which came a little earlier in the set, the solo piano section gave Gaga the chance to get intimate with the crowd and putting forth a love-yourself message of self-actualization.

“I see a lot of people who know exactly who they are,” she said. “And for those that don’t, you’ll figure it out.” She said that when people ask her “why I love the LGBTQ+ community so much, I say ‘I’ve always watched you lead the world with love.’”

Performing in the middle of a politically divided state, Gaga largely played it down the middle. “One thing I appreciate about this state is you don’t always agree,” she said. “And that’s OK. The world doesn’t (expletive) agree. But I know you all love people.”

Before “Angel Down,” the soft-focus ballad that was the only song performed from her 2016 country-tinged album Joanne, she addressed abortion rights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. “This is for everyone who has to worry about their body,” she said. “I know you came to the concert to have fun. But some people will die during childbirth, and some people will get raped, and they can’t have those kids.”

The show was fast-paced, satisfyingly punchy, expertly staged, and action packed, but still lost momentum at times. Blame the schematic five-act structure. The video interludes that divided each section were never all that long, but still allowed the energy to dissipate while everyone waited to see what Gaga would do — and look like — next.

Here’s the set list from Sunday night in Hershey.

”Bad Romance”

“Just Dance”

”Poker Face”

“Alice”

“Replay”

“Monster”

“Flowers”

“911″

”Sour Candy”

“Telephone”

“LoveGame”

“Babylon”

”Free Woman”

”Born This Way”

“Shallow”

”Always Remember Us This Way”

”The Edge of Glory”

”Angel Down”

”Fun Tonight”

“Enigma”

”Stupid Love”

”Rain On Me”

”Hold My Hand”