Birmingham became the first British city to undergo “The Beyoncé Experience” when the former Destiny’s Child opened the UK leg of her current world tour at the National Exhibition Centre. Rising from beneath the stage, wreathed in smoke and white light, while a curtain of fireworks cascaded from the roof behind her, she stood for a moment like an Amazon warrior, arms held above her head. “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to be entertained?” she yelled, as if throwing down a gauntlet. If not, tough luck.

The 25-year-old superstar and ten-times Grammy-winner from Houston, Texas, stamped her mark on the 2½hour extravaganza which followed with such authority and vigour that it seemed at times as if the audience were not quite able to keep up. “You’re a little quiet for me,” she told the crowd on more than one occasion. This may have been, in part, because most of them were busy trying to lift their jaws from the floor. It may also have been a measure of just how loud this new queen of R’n’B likes to play it.

Combining the dance moves and dress sense of the young Tina Turner with the vocal firepower of Patti LaBelle, Beyoncé surged through Freakum Dress and Green Light, both from her multimillion-selling second album B’Day. Her 13-piece backing band, including horn and vocal sections, was staffed entirely by women. In addition six lithe female dancers disported themselves in a variety of costumes, loosely based around an unfinished negligée theme. Four male dancers also made an appearance and soon ripped off their shirts to reveal rippling torsos.

Beyoncé returned from the first of many costume changes kitted out in a bellydancer’s outfit. With her tummy undulating like a slab of brown marble placed under water, she sang Baby Boy and her recent No 1 hit Beautiful Liar with pulverising intensity while her thick tresses swirled around her head as if caught in a high desert wind.

The entire history of Destiny’s Child flashed before our eyes, courtesy of a swift medley of hits, which found the dancers stretched out in a line behind a dancing bar. Stomping, shaking, snorting and shrieking, Beyoncé hammered into the climactic verse of Survivor, her delivery a cross between a show pony and a raging lioness.

Her attempt at an introspective ballad, Flaws and All, was less convincing. She certainly gave it her best shot, even mustering an impressive crocodile tear which rolled down her glittering cheek bang on cue during the last verse, but Beyoncé hasn’t quite got the hang of doing sensitive, let alone vulnerable.

Faced with such an overwhelming and sustained display of show-womanship, it seems faintly churlish to mention other occasional shortcomings such as the use of taped raps from a ghostly Jay-Z on Upgrade U and the encore of Déjà Vu. However, it had become obvious long before then that resistance to The Experience was futile. You know when you’ve been Beyoncéed.

—Tour continues on June 5 at Cardiff International Arena

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