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When Lily Allen’s West End Girl was released in October 2025, it was an instant sensation. A raw document of marital betrayal and neglect, it was a new kind of divorce album for the post-tabloid celebrity, inspired by Allen’s own separation from actor David Harbour. It earned Allen rave reviews and a place alongside Miranda July’s All Fours in a contemporary canon of emancipatory, autofictional art for modern (heterosexual) women. The album’s structure as a narrative held rich potential for live staging, and Allen’s choice to play it in full on a tour of theatres – before returning for an arena run later this year – suggested she would make good on its theatrical promise.
Split into two acts, West End Girl Live certainly begins with theatrical flair. A string ensemble – named the Dallas Minor Trio after one of the album’s standout tracks – takes to the stage for a version of Allen’s 2008 hit The Fear. The crowd enthusiastically sings along to karaoke-style lyrics on a screen behind the trio. It works as a prelude: the song’s minor key paranoia translates well to the arrangement and its themes of existential crises are relevant to the album we’re here to see.
It’s a shame that this wry, fitting start is undermined as the trio goes on to play nine more of Allen’s songs in this style. Songs like Not Fair work fairly well as Bridgerton-style instrumentals, but the maligned 2014 single Hard Out Here doesn’t – nor does it benefit from having its somewhat tone-deaf lyrics projected. Staging hits like this might be cute as a 10-minute-long introduction, but as the entire, 45-minute first half of a much-anticipated comeback show it risks testing the patience of the audience; a compromise between committing to a full album show and avoiding accusations of not playing the hits.
After not appearing in the first act of her own show, the pressure on Allen to deliver a satisfying second half is high. After an interval, Allen appears from behind a luxe theatre curtain for West End Girl’s breezy title track; the calm before the storm on a lush, spotlit set. She answers a rotary phone on the pink velvet steps, acting out one side of a shattering phone call. She’s a bit stiff onstage, even as the skittering beats of Ruminating kick in. The curtain pulls back to reveal a stage set of a stylised bedroom, but not much is made of this extra room: Allen moves from chair to chaise to bed as though blocking in a rehearsal. The everyday details listed in Tennis – emails, texts, Instagram posts – gave the original album the texture of real life, but here they feel banal.
This could be a false start down to nerves, but unfortunately the energy barely increases as the show goes on, even when Allen has something more to do. During Pussy Palace she pulls props from the song’s lyrics (“Duane Reade bag with the handles tied/Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside”). She moves awkwardly during Relapse, as though making a half-hearted attempt to act out the song’s panic. 4chan Stan is also awkward, as she wraps herself in long lengths of fabric printed like a receipt she’s examining (“Never been to Bergdorf’s/But you took someone shopping there on May 24”). Allen seems to loosen up and engage more directly with the crowd during Nonmonogamummy and Dallas Major, but between them she performs Just Enough standing stock-still behind a curtain.
There’s a version of this show that could lean into listlessness and work. Allen could emphasise the lethargic state she finds herself in on Let You W/In (“I’ve become invisible, stuck here in my palace/I’m so fucking miserable”) by contrasting it with something dynamic, as she does with the album’s production. As it is, it’s dull to watch her go through the motions to a backing track. It’s undeniable that the audience are into the second half: shouts of “dump him” reverberate along with the lyrics to every song, and there’s a standing ovation at the end. But how much of that comes from existing goodwill – and, undoubtedly for some, the desire to perform catharsis to this material? In the first act, Allen’s audience sang for her – if they had to do the same for the second act, would they have still got what they needed?
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Lily Allen’s West End Girl Live tour continues in the UK until 22 March before returning later this year; as well as the US, Europe and Australia.
