HIGH AND DRY

Stage Malfunction Maroons Beyoncé in Warsaw

Their record-breaking On the Run II tour has yielded Beyoncé and Jay-Z many millions, but the finely honed stagecraft hit the skids this week in dramatic fashion in Poland.

Beyoncé was left high and dry during a concert Saturday night in Warsaw.

A key part of her and Jay-Z’s On the Run II performance involves a finale with a flying stage, enabling her to hover above the crowd. But disaster struck at the Polish gig after the aerial platform got stuck, marooning Queen Bey 20 feet up in the air.

One fan, concert-goer Kuba Kuca, videoed the whole thing and posted the clip to YouTube, writing, “Beyoncé’s flying stage got broken at the end of the show in Warsaw and she had to walk down on a ladder. She also gave us a little cute dance!”

After the high-tech stage show malfunctioned, roadies resorted to a low-tech solution to rescue Bey, bringing in a ladder so that she could get down. Beyoncé appeared unwilling at first to clamber down from her perch on the precarious steps, perhaps due to her high heels and revealing costume, which wasn’t shown at its most flattering angle as she descended the ladder.

The On the Run II Tour is expected to be one of the biggest commercial successes of recent years, with predictions it could net between $180 million and $200 million, almost double the amount of their 2014 tour. The biggest grossing tour of all time remains U2’s 360 tour, which was seen by a staggering seven million people over two years. The most commercially successful inflation-adjusted tour of all time is Pink Floyd’s 1987-1989 Momentary Lapse of Reason tour.

A key part of the success of OTRII is that Beyoncé and Jay, who have rescued a business and personal relationship that appeared to be very publicly heading south, only played two shows in Europe in 2014. This time, the couple are playing nine gigs in Europe, focusing on cities with established fan bases where either or both Jay and Bey have played before. The power couple have pursued an aggressive ticket-pricing strategy, with prices ranging from $25 to $380, and the tour being accompanied by an album release and a lavish full color book stuffed full of nude pics.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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