She has sold staggering quantities of records both here and in America since winning The X Factor three years ago. But Leona Lewis had never staged a full-length concert until this show at Hackney Empire, the venue where she made her first public performance at the age of 13.

Despite cancelling promotional engagements after being punched in the face at a book signing last month, Lewis was clearly back to full strength and threw everything at the task in hand. There were unusual visual effects, including vast windswept visions of the 24-year-old singer superimposed on a scrim in front of the stage so that you could see the real Lewis and her dreamy alter-ego both performing at the same time.

Industrial quantities of dry ice poured in from the wings and washed over the floor, cascading onto the heads of the security staff standing in front of the stage. A troupe of bare-chested, ghost-faced dancers, who looked as if they had strayed from a Halloween party, writhed and rolled around in a succession of oddly contorted routines. And even the (non-paying) audience had been carefully selected to ensure that only the most ardent of fans would be there to witness this milestone event.

But for all the effort and expertise that was deployed, the result was a slender, shallow performance lacking in genuinely emotional heft. Lewis has a great voice and an intimidating vocal range. But she is more show pony than singer. The qualities that look good on TV set-pieces and are likely to impress impresarios like Simon Cowell are not necessarily the same as those that connect with a live audience. Like those hyper-real paintings that you see hanging on the railings in the Bayswater Road on Sunday mornings, her songs have a bright, populist appeal, but in concert there was a distinct lack of depth.

Accompanied by an anonymous six-man band and two backing vocalists, Lewis sang several numbers from her new album, Echo, beginning with Brave, in which she confessed to feelings of fear and weakness in tones that became increasingly shrill and bombastic as the song wore on. Better In Time suffered from a technical hitch which made the acoustic guitar at the beginning sound like a wasp trapped in a jam jar. But band and singer were both well into their stride as she tackled Happy and then Bleeding Love, the hit which, as she gratefully acknowledged, had made so many wonderful things happen in her life.

An overwrought version of the cabaret standard The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was swiftly followed by the Kylie-lite disco thump of Outta My Head. Silver confetti rained down on top of Lewis, as she picked her way through the final, epic melody of the Snow Patrol song Run, leaving the stage looking as if a dustbin of dreams had been upended on it, as the houselights abruptly came up and the show ended.

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