An effortlessly sultry Sabrina Carpenter flirts with the crowd and reps the Phillies at Wells Fargo Center

While the rest of Philadelphia was likely mourning a Phillies loss Tuesday night, the Wells Fargo Center was too busy cheering on the hometown flirt.

Pint-size pop star Sabrina Carpenter brought her aptly titled “Short n’ Sweet” tour to South Philly, transforming the arena into the set of an old-timey variety show that was equal parts campy and coquettish.

It was a hometown show for Carpenter, who grew up 38 miles outside Philly in Quakertown, Bucks County, where she spent her childhood uploading Christina Aguilera covers to YouTube, and performing “God Bless America” at Phils’ games.

And like a true Philadelphian, Carpenter talked some trash.

“Should we talk about where the best cheesesteak is actually from? Let’s fight about it,” Carpenter asked ahead of “Nonsense” (minus the naughty outro, unfortunately) from her 2022 album Emails I Can’t Send.

Negging the crowd is part of how Carpenter flirts — at least in Philly — as is laying it on thick. After affectionately calling the audience her “cousins” at the start of the night, Carpenter closed the show in a bedazzled Phillies jersey emblazoned with a “69″ on the back (how cheeky!). It shimmered as she strutted around onstage to “Espresso,” her deeply meme-able hit about keeping your partner up with thoughts of how amazingly hot you are.

Flirtation is the dominant vibe at the “Short n’ Sweet Tour.” Carpenter is sultry in an effortlessly obvious way, like a pinup, flitting around the pastel-tinted stage in corseted red leotards, sheer black catsuits, platform heels, and what can only be described as bombshell hair.

It’s a look that resonates with Carpenter’s fans, who flooded the Wells Fargo Center in hair bows, miniskirts, and corsets. Before Carpenter took the stage, the crowd passed around stickers of a red lip print — a reference to the lip stain tattoo Carpenter rocks on the album cover for this year’s Short n’ Sweet — and placed them suggestively.

Much has been said about Carpenter’s playfully sexual aesthetic and the way it helped her seep into the monoculture. After six albums, the ex-Disney star’s viral innuendo-laden sign-offs during live performances catapulted her to the mainstream, landing Carpenter a job as one of several openers for Taylor Swift on the “Eras Tour.” From there, it was braggadocious Billboard hit after Billboard hit for Carpenter, alongside a limited-edition ice cream flavor, a syrupy-sweet perfume, and a faceoff with the Catholic church that made her a minor character in Eric Adam’s indictment.

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In this context, Carpenter’s stage design is almost a meta-commentary on her sudden popularity. The show was framed as an episode of the fictitious Short n’ Sweet show, a Carol Burnett-esque variety program that has two cameras following Carpenter around a multitiered dollhouse as she pantomimes intimacy.

During “Taste” — the concert’s opener — Carpenter pretended to primp in front of a mirror alongside a gaggle of backup dancers in negligees. Six songs later, those same cameras swiveled to capture Carpenter having a pillow fight in a plush honeymoon resort-style bed during “Bed Chem,” which closed with Carpenter acting out a sex scene behind a curtain.

Stacked atop one another, Carpenter’s repeated allusions to the wonders of fourth base are campy, eliciting the same feeling as when Samantha Jones shares a sexcapade on Sex and the City.

When Carpenter handed a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs to the unassuming Gregory, a random audience member she flirted with from the stage, the audience giggled. And when she invited the audience to try “some freaky positions” during “Juno,” they laughed as Carpenter rolled around on a heart-shaped platform to act out lazy dog, a lesser known (and slight more acrobatic) version of doggy style.

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Carpenter also did her fair share of more straightforward comedy, hitting high notes during the chorus of “Sharpest Tool” while sitting on a toilet and chugging a bottle of fake soda for a musical version of spin the bottle that determined the night’s surprise song.

It was “Busy Woman,” a slightly jazzy and compulsively danceable unreleased jam about trying (and failing) to be too busy to hook up with your situationship.

Carpenter’s performance was also replete with an earnestness only a hometown show could bring. Carpenter told the crowd that she played her first official concert in Philadelphia when she was 16, saying that she “owes [her] creativity and imagination to this city.”

“Philadelphia helped shape me,” she said.

The moment was a tender and necessary bridge from “because i liked a boy,” a biting track that’s reportedly about the hate Carpenter received after being unofficially linked to Joshua Bassett, the guy Olivia Rodrigo sings about in “Drivers License.”

It’s one of only six songs Carpenter performed from Emails I Can’t Send. And for good reason: that era is in the rearview window.

Here’s the set list for Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short n’Sweet Tour” at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

“Taste”

“Good Graces”

“Slim Pickins”

“Tornado Warnings”

“Lie To Girls”

“decode”

“Bed Chem”

“Feather”

“Fast Times”

“Read your Mind”

“Sharpest Tool”

“opposite”

“because i liked a boy”

“Coincidence”

“Busy Woman” (unreleased)

“Nonsense”

“Dumb & Poetic”

“Juno”

“Please Please Please”

“Don’t Smile”

“Espresso”