Review: Lily Allen at RAC Arena

Lily Allen at RAC Arena
w/ Dallas Minor Sextet
Sunday, November 1, 2026

It’s a bit audacious putting on a one-woman show in a stadium. Even moreso when you’re a bonafide pop star playing to thousands of screaming fans who’d probably prefer you just played the hits.

But Lily Allen stuck to the script performing latest album West End Girl in full Sunday, with no encore save a curtsy and accepting a bunch of flowers commemorating the final date of her Australian tour. Those looking for a singalong made do with the opening six cellos of the Dallas Minor Sextet who, despite not having a singer, featured the night’s loudest choral arrangements thanks to lyrics being projected across the big screen like a kind of fancy karaoke that the femme-dominated crowd lapped right up, conductor and all.

It was a forum for her best-loved songs to be included, as the likes of LDN, Not Fair, Alfie (the 2007 single about her stoner little brother who would go on to play Theon Greyjoy in Game of Thrones) and Smile, wrapping up on the loudest chant of all to Fuck You. If it all sounds a bit naff, it was. No doubt a cello sextet could make some wonderful music, but here they simply served a purpose and the crowd responded in kind.

Fortunately, the main event was a total homerun. The original nepo baby, despite her popularity and a string of chart-topping hits, Lily Allen has never been your run-of-the-mill pop idol. Her private life has often resembled a hot mess and has frequently found its way into the tabloids—this is the woman who got busted cheating on her ex-husband with female prostitutes, after all.

But over the course of her career Allen has frequently found ways to turn lemons into lemonade, and never has that been more enjoyable than on last year’s career peak album West End Girl. The somewhat fictionalised account of her marriage breakdown with Stranger Things actor David Harbour, Allen’s sordid version of events details Harbour asking for an open marriage, then constantly shifting the goalposts and failing to maintain transparency and respect.

With a whiz-bang stadium introduction and “West End Girl” written in lights across the top, the theatrics kicked off with Allen replicating the title track’s unsettling phone call live onstage using a prop phone. An acclaimed actress in her own right, there was genuine emotion in Allen’s eyes during tracks such as this and Relapse, in which our teetotal star contemplated falling off the wagon: “I need a drink, I need a valium,” she pleaded.

As the set expanded to reveal a luxe hotel suite, Allen’s clothing started coming off until a sultry Sleepwalking played out like a burlesque strip show on the chaise longue. Pulled off with aplomb, it was an early highlight, as was the one-two of Tennis and Madeline, the latter seeing Allen nail an American accent for the titular character (a fictional name for the woman Harbour allegedly had an affair with).

A concept album inspired by The Streets’ classic A Grand Don’t Come for Free, even those who weren’t familiar with the record were transfixed by the story, and Allen’s vocals were clear and confident. She’s a different person to the upstart of 20 years ago sporting a mock-Cockney accent; the Lily Allen of today is more elegant and measured but equally as acerbic. At no point was this more obvious than in the one proper singalong of the show, Pussy Palace. With a total outfit and set change, Allen produced prop butt plugs and double-ended dildos to accompany the biting lyrics: “Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside/ Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken/ How’d I get caught up in your double life?”

The whacks kept coming as Allen experimented with dating apps on Dallas Major and bemoaned the constant hits to her confidence on Nonmonogamummy and Beg for Me. “I don’t want to fuck with anyone else/ I know that’s all you want to do,” she sang on the latter; “I feel embarrassed, I feel ashamed,” on the former.

“It’s not me, it’s you,” Allen eventually surmised, with a nod to her hit 2009 album. Lifted from scathing finale Fruityloop, the “West End Girl” sign lit back up and we were reminded that we’d been to the theatre. A uniquely stadium-lit theatre show, to be sure, and one of the more original and intimate tours to come through Perth this year.

HARVEY RAE

Photos by Emma Louise Smith