Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' show is campy and surreal, but don't look for depth: concert review

Say what you will about Miley Cyrus, she definitely knows how to make an entrance.

At the Izod Arena in the Meadowlands on Thursday, Cyrus became the first performer in the history of music to vomit herself onto a stage.

When a giant video image of the star's mouth opened, the live Cyrus shot from the back of its throat and was retched onto the stage by a slide fashioned in the form of her famous dangling tongue.

Watching, you didn't know whether to giggle or to gag - a one-two punch of reactions which, together, have made Miley the most argued-about pop star of the Instagram age.

During her 100 minute show, Miley proceeded to regurgitate every costume, move, and prop that — in the eight fast months since the VMAs — has earned her nearly as thick a press kit as Barack Obama has amassed in his entire presidency.

The new "Bangerz" show runs through all of the star's greatest stunts: twerking, exploiting little people (one in a cone bra), dancers in fuzzy animal suits, foam fingers — everything but a red-faced Robin Thicke.

Along the way, Miley also sang — live, loudly and confidently, despite her oft-stated complaints of vocal problems. Not to wory. Deeper emotion was never part of the equation, anyway.

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Miley Cyrus performing at the Izod Center on April 3 2014. (Pearl Gabel/New York Daily News)

(Pearl Gabel/New York Daily News)

As empty as this candy wrapper of a show may have been, it had a demented charge, and it contained nary an ounce of pretense.

Certainly, it had surrealism on its side. The shapes and colors of the event appeared in a kaleidoscopic swirl. Many came courtesy of "Ren & Stimpy" artist John Kricfalusi, a man expert at obliterating that always fine line between children's theater and stoner art.

In "FU," the screens filled with psychedelic mushrooms. In "My Darlin'," a giant joint burned away, while in "Love Money Party," the star sported a sparkling pot-themed unitard.

For some sex, the funky "#GETITRIGHT" featured a projection of breasts and va-jay-jays formed from candy. Righteous types might find the mix of kiddie animation and grown-up games too much for their own children. Certainly, it presented the most subversive possible rebuke to Cyrus' past. But, as it turns out, her audience has aged with her. At the Meadowlands, it consisted overwhelmingly of girls in their late teens and early 20s.

To further torch any bridge to her Hannah Montana past, Cyrus didn't perform any songs from her early Disney days, though she did feature the pre-twerking hit "Party In the U.S.A." as a zippy encore.

The star didn't only shaft the past. She emphasized her earnest side by tearing up during several long and florid speeches about her dog, which died this week. She also threw a stronger light on her singing. She stressed that most obviously in an acoustic section.

To her credit, she refused to lip-synch or use obvious backing tapes. If only her country-inflected voice projected something of more than blunt power. Her cover of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" reduced a poetic classic to a pop throwaway. A take on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" showed no awareness of the narrator's pain.

Those drawbacks aren't ruinous in a night that put spectacle and camp first. Certainly, it was hard not to smile at a finale that had the star straddling a giant flying hot dog, dressed in mustard yellow, like a human condiment.

Sights like that struck a balance that defines Miley today — between the cheeky and the low.

Cyrus plays Barclays Center Saturday

jfarber@nydailynews.com