UNIONDALE, N.Y. — The preteen concert of the year had arrived on Long Island. T-shirts were selling like crazy at $30. Thousands of lucky girls (along with a handful of boys, some of whom had probably sworn their sisters to secrecy) were ready to scream at the top of their lungs. And at least one young fan had some questions about what she was seeing.
Miley Cyrus fans at the Nassau Coliseum on Friday night.
For starters: What if it splashes? And how do you flush?
You never forget your first concert, or your first urinal. And here at the Nassau Coliseum on Friday night, where some men’s rooms had been turned into emergency women’s rooms, at least a few girls saw both.
This was the second Long Island date of the Best of Both Worlds Tour starring Miley Cyrus, who plays both Miley Stewart and her rock-star alter ego Hannah Montana on Disney’s “Hannah Montana.” (The sitcom is, in part, an examination of the pleasures and pitfalls of multiple identity; in an era of proliferating screen names and virtual cliques, that seems like a timely subject.)
The concert had been preceded by a thunderous buildup. Tickets disappeared immediately, outraging fan-club members and turning eager parents into desperate ones. And in a brilliant and shameless response to all the excitement, the Nassau Coliseum was opened on Boxing Day, one day before the first concert, for the sole purpose of selling Miley Cyrus merchandise to ticketless fans.
After that much commotion, Friday’s concert was almost guaranteed to feel like a letdown. Yet somehow it didn’t. The show was terrific: a two-hour sugar rush and one long challenge to fans, who had to keep up with Ms. Cyrus’s hectic pace. Some of the youngest ones weren’t quite up to the task. By 9 p.m., as the night was winding down, small bodies were being plucked from their valuable seats and carried, unresponsive, up the stairs and out into the parking lot.
Onstage as on television Ms. Cyrus, who turned 15 last month, comes across as a hard-working, sweet-natured troublemaker. There’s something slightly disruptive about her bright smile, accented by round cheeks that gleam like an extra pair of eyes. And she brings a welcome hint of chaos to everything she does. (Viewers looking for more insight might want to sample “Billy Ray Cyrus: Home at Last,” an uncomfortable reality series on CMT starring her father, the country singer and “Hannah Montana” co-star. Mr. Cyrus seems eager to remind viewers about his famous daughter, though she’s mainly off camera; after a while it starts to seem as if he’s name-dropping.)
She started the show as Hannah Montana, resplendent in a blond wig and outfits that changed every few songs. “Old Blue Jeans” has banal lyrics about being a “real,” regular girl (a reaction, perhaps, to the triple burden of being Miley-Miley-Hannah), but when she sang, “I’m gonna put on my old blue jeans/Gonna walk out of here into the street,” she sounded as if she were looking for a fight. And a song from the 2006 “Hannah Montana” soundtrack reduces her appeal to a pithy three-word slogan: “I Got Nerve.”
In June she released “Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus” (Walt Disney/Hollywood), a double album designed to show off her split personality. The Miley songs have a bit more bite, and she emerged as Miley for the second half of her show, with a black-leather biker vest on her back and chains around her waist. During “Start All Over” she kicked over the mic stand and banged her head; it worked because she seemed more giddy than angry.
Ms. Cyrus is a likable singer, happy to yell some words for emphasis and willing to rely on her backups when she’s out of breath. And the best Miley Cyrus songs give her nervy music to match her persona. She shone during “See You Again,” a zippy new-wave crush song written with and produced by Antonina Armato and Tim James, the deft duo that has helped define the sound of Disney pop. (You can also hear their work on “High School Musical 2,” and on the fizzy recent CD from Aly & AJ.)
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