The question is no longer whether Britney Spears can make it as a Vegas headliner, but rather how long she wants to be one. Spears’ groundbreaking Piece of Me residency at Planet Hollywood Resort has been given a $35 million extension through December 2017, with a flexible schedule that allowed her to be with the family for Mother’s Day and a Malibu Memorial Day weekend. It was a working vacation for Spears, though, as she performed a four-song medley with her dancers at the May 22 Billboard Music Awards held inside the Strip’s new T-Mobile Arena. Spears is back at Planet Hollywood Resort for five weeks through July 13, with a show refreshed this year for fervent fans who have helped sell out the 4,500-capacity theater repeatedly since Piece of Me’s Dec. 27, 2013 debut.
Audiences who saw her pay homage to Joan Jett as part of her mini-set at the BMAs—where she won the Millennium Award—got a taste of what’s new for Spears’ show. She now rides a giant guitar like a mechanical bull during her cover of “I Love Rock N’ Roll” early in the show’s current version, which still kicks off with “Work Bitch” but with a set design tweak that sees the spherical cage Spears once emerged from replaced by something less confining, both physically and symbolically.
Gone are “3,” “Perfume,” “I Wanna Go” and “Lucky.” Spears added “Pretty Girls,” her 2015 duet with Iggy Azalea, after performing it with Azalea at last year’s BMAs, but by February began including “Breathe On Me,” “If U See Amy” and “Touch My Hand.” Spears is particularly excited about having “Breathe on Me” in the show, but her enthusiasm is also apparent during an interlude dedicated to Missy Elliot featuring high-octane dancing to “Work It,” “Get Your Freak On” and “WTF (Where They From).” There’s no shortage of patented Britney moves, though, or costume changes, steamy dance moves and visual spectacle, with lasers now enhancing the atmosphere.
It’s no secret now that Spears’ vocals are buoyed by backing tracks in order for her to keep up with what is arguably the most physically demanding production ever built around a singer on the Strip, but fans do not come to be awed by vocal acrobatics. They come to be transported back to a simpler if not so innocent time when “… Baby One More Time” and “Oops! … I Did It Again” challenged boy band dominance of the pop charts. Piece of Me allows girls that grew into women along with Britney to come to the state-of-the-art party in fashionable packs to party alongside ecstatic celebrity worshippers and connoisseurs of cutting-edge choreography.
Spears will likely continue to find willing victims to come onstage and get on all fours while leashed to a studded harness during “Freakshow.” Will.i.am still appears on video during the “Scream and Shout” interlude, while “Toxic” retains its torch song beginning and a ring of fire sparks the mood for “Circus.” Spears takes advantage of the runway stage to get closer to the audience, and closes the show with Kesha-penned “Till the World Ends.” As Kesha told Spin, the song was written from the point of view of someone like Spears “having an amazing, magical night and you don’t want to go to sleep and you want it to last until the world ends”—an apt description for the experience that Spears’ fans have found at Piece of Me.
Planet Hollywood Resort, 9 p.m. June 17-18, 22, 24-25 & 29, July 1-2, 6, 8-9 & 13, starting at $59 plus tax and fee. 800.745.3000 Ticketmaster
