The Weeknd Dazzles Philadelphia With High-Tech ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ Tour Opener: Concert Review

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi It’s difficult to imagine that an intensely theatrical performer like the Weeknd — whose videos, concerts, 2021 Super Bowl Halftime performance and lyrics are loaded with vibrant, at times disturbing imagery — would launch his first-ever stadium tour without spectacle.And thankfully, after several  incidents of unwanted drama — including two Covid-related delays, the postponement of the tour’s intended opening date in Toronto last weekend due to a Canada-wide wireless outage, and original opening act Doja Cat dropping out due to tonsil surgery — for the belated first night of his “After Hours Til Dawn” tour in Philadelphia, the theatrics were all onstage.The concert took place on a humid July night in Philadelphia, which had a temperature of 87 degrees as the show opened with sets from producer-artist Mike Dean and Canadian electronic act Kaytranada, but it had cooled down by the time the Weeknd’s headlining set began at around 9 p.m.

The Weeknd’s best music traffics in mood, nuance and a mixture of ecstasy and darkness, and that carried over onto a sprawling, technically complex stage, which broadly resembles a towering, crumbling cityscape and spanned much of the Lincoln Financial Field’s grounds.

For the two-hour set, the singer, decked as usual in black, was accompanied by a gang of sheathed dancers  — and a crowd of nearly 70,000 people, many of whom were devotees in red jackets and bandaged noses, in emulation of his “After Hours” look.