Lily Allen Performs West End Girl3Arena, Dublin★★★☆☆A mental readjustment is required for Lily Allen Performs West End Girl, to give this debate-sparking show its full title. Yes, we are ostensibly at 3Arena for a gig, but the clue is in the title. This performance is really a slice of one-woman musical theatre, and it is all about Allen’s face.The point is underlined when the singer returns for her curtain call, takes a wobbly bow and receives a giant bouquet. Allen deserves some credit for the creative gamble she has taken by turning West End Girl, her headline-making autofictional album, into this often startling hour, which is blessed with vintage Hollywood production design and cheer-eliciting interaction with a succession of camp props (a feather duster, a rotary phone, a dildo).Theatre light bulbs flash as she emerges in a metallic cocktail dress, twirling to exhibit its big bow, and proceeds to sing the title song to a backing track while captured by the harshest of spotlights. The pathos-laden climax of this opener arrives when she takes the phone call in which she reluctantly agrees to her husband’s request for an open marriage. On the big screens, we see her eyes dull as the suggestion renders her numb, then her lip starts to wobble.Allen gamely portrays the insecurity and rage triggered by third parties and the ensuing isolation of marital breakdown, cutting a lonely figure as she enacts what is effectively an account of her divorce from David Harbour, the Stranger Things actor. (She has described it as a “mixture of fact and fiction”.)The show (and the album) peaks with Pussy Palace, a track that devastatingly exemplifies the humour that has made Allen queen of the pithy lyric. “So am I looking at a sex addict, sex addict, sex addict, sex addict? / Oh, talk about a low blow, oh no, oh no,” she sings lethargically from a bed as she examines a stash of sex toys with an expression of deadpan disdain.But there is an inescapable slightness to the artistic exercise. The show has generated pushback from those who feel its duration is not worth the ticket price, prompting a defensive Allen to post that it “has always been advertised” as a performance of West End Girl in its entirety.This is true, but some ticket buyers would still have had the reasonable expectation at the time of purchase that there would be a second half – or an encore, at least – in which she returned to bang out a few oldies. This is standard operating procedure for artists who do full-album shows.Allen’s case isn’t helped by her choice of warm-up act: an ensemble that gives an uncalled-for cello treatment to her back catalogue while lyrics pop up on the screen for the swelling audience to sing along. They co-operate, but the term “shadow work” – meaning any labour performed by consumers that used to be done by paid employees – sprang to mind. Look, if the concept of karaoke sessions on arena bills spreads, we’ll all be in trouble.[ David Harbour on Lily Allen’s West End Girl album: ‘It wasn’t my experience’Opens in new window ]What is clear is that the singer was not trying to say “f**k you very, very much” to her fans – a line they cathartically holler – when she conceived this show, so it is a pity there is a strong sense here of the idea being better than the execution. Still, as an acting showcase, it is compelling enough, and a high-heeled Allen proves adept at conveying the intense emptiness of not being wanted with every confused totter.[ No, Lily Allen, we were never meant to know this much about one anotherOpens in new window ]