Christine and the Queens review – a brilliant, undeniable force

‘Portsmouth, say what!” shouts a breathless Chris, aka the artist also known as Christine and the Queens (and born Héloïse Letissier), at the start of the first night of her UK tour. There is a confused silence, a ripple of boos, a smattering of “er, Bournemouth!” but it is all quickly lost in the electrified G-funk of the incoming Le G, taken from the French-language half of her muscular new album, also called Chris. Her failure to grasp the geography of UK coastal towns is quickly forgiven, with the undeniable force of her megawatt stage presence, self-deprecating humour and handful of off-kilter pop bangers briefly transforming the atmosphere-free venue from political party conference to one of a heaving club where anything goes. “This is a safe place,” she smiles. “I want to see some sweat on those beautiful faces.”

As you might expect from someone who, in 2016, rescued a rainy, post-Brexit-vote Glastonbury almost singlehandedly, and subsequently propelled her debut album of queer pop, Chaleur Humaine, to sell a million copies worldwide, Chris relishes a challenge. Expelled from a theatre studies course a decade ago for having the temerity to a) be a woman and b) want to direct, she is meticulous about each detail on display and how it shifts the mood. The otherwise sparse stage is adorned for the first act by a floor to ceiling painting of bucolic rolling hills, creating the perfect backdrop for low-slung single Girlfriend and its sprightly choreography.

During the emotionally ravaged Paradis Perdus, the lights on the painting shift and a thundercloud that had seemed to be resting calmly in the distance hovers into view. Later, the screens fall away altogether, replaced variously by banks of lights, plumes of green smoke and fluttering fake snow. At one point, a dancer seems to literally go up in smoke. It is modern theatre cajoled into a pop concert framework.

Joined by six dancers, Chris swaps the supple, loose-limbed movement of her debut for a more animalistic physicality, jostling sweatily with her cohorts on opener Comme Si and providing the centre around which they spin like orbiting planets during a spectacular 5 Dollars. The choreography is so far removed from your typical pop show – at one point, during the harpsichord heavy The Stranger, the dancers mimic the rise and fall of a wave, as if in slow motion – that when they do line up for a typical dance break, as on the horny strut of Damn (What Must a Woman Do), it feels cathartic. As the song crashes to a close, keen to really hammer home the lineage she’s channelling, she chucks in a quick snippet of Janet Jackson’s Nasty for good measure.

Having exhausted the stage, Chris appears in the throng of the circle for the encore, delivering Saint Claude surrounded by phone screens. “You’ve been really friendly, I appreciate that,” she says, before describing the final song as a lullaby. She senses the twinge of disappointment, but it’s a fake as she skips through the crowd to the pulsating electro throb of Intranquillité. Climbing back onstage to take the spotlight alone while her dancers flex in the front row, her red shirt untucked and drenched in sweat, she leaves with a request: “Stay freaky.” Portsmouth, Bournemouth, wherever, will never be the same.