Katy Perry praised for ‘high camp’ Las Vegas show including dancing poo and talking toilet

Katy Perry’s Las Vegas show has been branded “part fantasy, part hallucination” and “high art” by critics and social media users alike.

The “Firework” singer kicked off her Play residency at the Resorts World Theater on Wednesday (29 December) with an explosive show full of anthropomorphic household objects, dancing mushrooms and a giant rocking horse.

In a review for Rolling Stone, Mark Gray wrote that the huge, bizarre items felt like “an ode to Pee-wee’s Playhouse”, Pee-wee Herman’s children’s TV show.

“One set piece for ‘Chained to the Rhythm’ featured a dancing alarm clock choreographing moves alongside a sock puppet and two rhythmic walkie-talkies,” Gray said. “Another scene included a massive bathroom, featuring a colossal tub, a mammoth soap bar, and, yep, a toilet that talked.”

In one part of the show, which has resulted in numerous memes, Perry wears a bra made of two smashed Corona beer cans that she drinks from on stage. She also sits on a giant crushed up can of “Swish beer”, a nod to her 2017 song “Swish Swish”.

Billboard’s Melinda Sheckells, however, wrote that the gimmick actually made for a “surprisingly poignant moment”, in which “Perry lactates beer from a tin-can bra during a socially conscious dialogue with her trash heap pal, Mr Masky”, a giant disposable face covering.

Another set piece widely shared on social media comes during Perry’s rendition of “California Gurls”, in which she twerks on a giant loo roll next to a talking toilet that contains a dancing poo.

Twitter users were left baffled by the scene, with one commenter writing: “The reason Katy Perry will never truly sit amongst the greats is because she refuses to just put on a show of her IMPECCABLE string of hits with some good choreo and opts to have a stupid dancing poo instead.”

Another, however, joked: “Katy Perry’s Vegas residency including a singing poo that has a corn kernel as a tooth… high art.”

Ultimately, Rolling Stone said that the show was “quintessential Perry, who indulged the emotional, the over-the-top, the whimsical, the psychedelic, and even the cheesy over the course of 95 minutes”.