Bigger isn’t always better, and Lily Allen just proved it. The singer announced this week that five arena dates on her upcoming fall tour are being swapped for smaller theaters and amphitheaters, while her planned Montreal stop has been scrapped entirely.
The shows in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and Vancouver were originally booked into arenas after Allen’s spring theater run for the same tour sold out and prompted a bigger fall expansion. Now those dates move to venues like the Chicago Theatre, the Greek Theatre and the Orpheum, closer in size to where the tour started. A new Seattle date has also been added. Her September 3 opener at Madison Square Garden remains untouched.
The tour supports Allen’s West End Girl album, a concept record chronicling the end of her marriage, performed live in full using backing tracks and without any banter between songs. Allen addressed the format directly in her announcement, explaining that skipping stage talk is intentional. “It’s my artistic choice not to talk to the audience, the fourth wall helps with the storytelling,” she wrote, adding that most people find it effective.
She also reassured fans nothing about the experience itself is changing. “I don’t want anyone to feel ripped off,” Allen wrote, noting how hard everyone on the tour is working to deliver a strong show. She didn’t give a specific reason for the venue shift, though the show’s stripped down, theatrical nature has drawn comparisons to a one woman Broadway production, and it’s been embraced as exactly that by critics and fans following its acclaimed spring run.
