Britney Brings Her 'Circus' To Philly

Give Britney Spears a little credit: It was a mere 2½ years ago that the pop star, who brought her three-rings-in-the-round "Circus" spectacle to the Wachovia Center on Sunday, was a bald-headed tabloid train wreck with a career seemingly beyond repair.

K-Fed was the least of her concerns: The teen-pop tease had grown up to be the out-of-control poster woman for poor parental decision-making. And when the story got out that the Associated Press had a Spears obituary ready, it seemed only logical, considering what an apparent danger she had become to herself.

Fast-forward to a late summer night in South Philadelphia, and all seems to be going swimmingly in the Spears sphere. Since being shorn of her locks in a Los Angeles tattoo parlor, she's released Blackout (2007) and Circus (2008), two perfectly respectable albums of energetic electro-pop, though the former, superior effort was overshadowed in the public consciousness by her 2007 MTV Video Music Awards near-comatose zombie dance.

And she's certainly found a way to monetize the madness, as one might expect from a New Mickey Mouse Club vet and mother of two. In "Piece of Me," her second song on Sunday, she sang (or at least mouthed the words): "I'm Miss Bad Media Karma, another day, another drama. . . And with a kid on my arm, I'm still an exceptional earner."

I'll say. Ringside seats at the Wachovia went for as much as $495, though most ducats in the almost-full arena were in the standard big pop concert range of $100. The still only 27-year-old Spears was not so long ago making news mainly for going commando in public, but now she's growing her college fund by selling $20 "Hit Me Baby. . ." panties. And for twice that amount, the highly-excited crowd of mostly 25-and-under females could confrontationally express their allegiance with a T-shirt that declared in no uncertain terms: "It's Britney Bitch!" Business was brisk.

And what about the music? It, too, was brisk, relentlessly paced, professionally deployed. Was anybody actually playing it, or was it all on tape? Hard to say. Along with the 12 buff dancers (eight men, four women) always visible, there seemed to be a team of musicians underneath the stage.

Towards the end of an evening that began with a taped intro by Web gossip maven Perez Hilton dressed as Queen Elizabeth I, there were a couple of normally dressed guitarists who appeared to be playing on stage, along with a drummer with a kit provocatively attached to his crotch and a third little-person guitarist holding a miniature instrument. (The Circus theme also included a man on stilts and a magician who sawed Spears in half during "Ooh Ooh Baby.")

At the start, a buff-enough Britney made her entrance in a cage that was lowered from the rafters. Starting in a golden Wonder Woman-style armored bustier, she changed into a series of costumes that were naughty if hardly scandalous, finishing for the ". . .Baby One More Time" closer and "Womanizer" encore in red spandex, black leather boots, and white spectacles. (The intellectual Britney.)

Throughout, she wore a headset microphone and consistently moved her mouth in time with the never all-that-expressive vocals that were pumped through the sound system.

Probably, she was actually singing over pre-recorded tracks that removed any possibility of an aural mishap. Careful binocular observation revealed that she sometimes didn't bother to enunciate her consonants, however; she seemed to sing, "I'm a Slay 4 You," but the audience heard the v sound in "Slave."

As a dancer, Spears can't come close to keeping up with her able-bodied employees. But then, she doesn't pretend to try, either. The Circus show - which, curiously, left out one of her biggest hits, "Oops! . . . I Did It Again," though it did include the divinely baroque dance-floor masterpiece "Toxic" - is an extremely physical enterprise. And the star of the show was constantly in motion, moving purposefully with little skip steps from one end of the stage to the next, or perhaps being lifted above it while sitting on the backs of two male dancers attached to wires who had contorted themselves, Cirque du Soleil-style, into an airborne bench for their blonde temptress.

Spears fans were deliriously happy to be in the same room with one of the biggest brand-name superstars in the world, and the object of their affection worked hard enough to put on a properly sensory-overloaded show, with a stage that shot off smoke jets and lit up in a burning ring of fire as Brit floated above it, as if in a hot air balloon. The evening ended in a cascade of sparkling fireworks and de rigeur confetti falling from the sky.