It has been a bad week for MOR dinosaurs. Phil Collins announced his retirement and Celine Dion is locked inside a metal cage. However, perhaps to her critics' frustration, the iron contraption ascends and transforms into a set of giant plasma screens. Beneath them, a 40-year old woman in a tiny pink outfit teeters on killer heels and sports a waistline so miniscule that if it were owned by Posh Spice she might consider dashing to the chip shop.
It is quite a turnaround for the singer usually known for stuffy costumes, interminable caterwauling and slush fund-friendly slushy ballads. However, in her nine-year break from touring (apart from a residency in Vegas), Dion has clearly been abducted by aliens and replaced by CelineBarbie, a dancing sex goddess who makes raunchy smiles at the camera, dances with musclemen, performs rockers penned by Pink's songwriter Linda Perry and, bizarrely, turns Roy Orbison songs into gay disco. The makeover includes sliding floors, computerised flames and at least one billowing white outfit which looks like the sort of thing you drape over the armchairs to do the decorating.There are still some cringeworthy moments. Dion is under the impression that England is just Buckingham Palace, tea and golf, and an unlikely Queen tribute fails in its promise to rock us. But if we must have hilariously overwrought power ballads, then let them be sung at tinnitus-inducing decibels with lungs the size of China. Her version of Alone makes Heart's original sound like a Domino Records lo-fi obscurity, while River Deep Mountain High threatens to reduce Phil Spector's wall of sound to rubble. My Love - which references her husband's successful battle with cancer - is a quieter moment, and CelineBarbie receives a standing ovation when she produces real-life tiny tears.· At the O2 Arena, London on Tuesday and Thursday. Box office: 0844 856 0202. Then touring.
