Pre-show During the pre-show, in the American part of the tour, a man who appears to be homeless pushes a shopping cart around the aisles around the floor seats. He wears a flannel jacket and a cowboy hat, and makes small talk with the fans as he makes his way around the floor. His cart is full of empty soda cans and rubbish and a sign that reads different sayings that vary from show to show, including, "No thought control" on one side and, "Homeless people need money for booze and hookers" on the other. His cart also contains the original stuffed "Pink" doll from 1979. The pre-show audio was 20 minutes of several clips from television sitcoms and cartoons like
Family Guy as well as comedy routines from
George Carlin. After the first leg of the North American tour, the sound collage was dropped and replaced with 20 minutes of music in the following order for every subsequent show, "
Mother" by
John Lennon, "
Masters of War" by
Bob Dylan, "
A Change Is Gonna Come" by
Sam Cooke, "
Imagine" by
John Lennon, "
Strange Fruit" by
Billie Holiday, and "
People Get Ready" by
The Impressions.
The show During the homeless man's tour through the crowd, the pre-show music stops and the sounds of channel surfing can be heard. When the homeless man reaches the stage, the climax of the movie
Spartacus is played. A spotlight shines on him and his cart as the sounds of the slaves each claiming to be Spartacus are heard. After which, the man throws "Pink" onto the stage. For the European shows and all shows thereafter, the homeless man was replaced with two "soldiers", bearing the crossed hammer uniform, who bring the "Pink" puppet onto the stage and hold him throughout the Spartacus clip, before dumping him on the ground and marching off the stage. As he does this, the audio transitions to a trumpet (later revealed to be Roger Waters) playing the melody of "
Outside the Wall". Waters stated, "Contrary to Mr Foxman's assertion, there are no hidden meanings in the order or juxtaposition of these symbols." These visuals were changed at Waters' request for all future shows, to avoid any sensitive juxtapositions of the symbols used in the video. At the first show of the tour, while these symbols dropped from the plane they also dropped from the ceiling of the Air Canada Centre in little cut-out shapes of confetti. During the song "
Don't Leave Me Now" the production features a giant wife puppet similar in design and execution as the Schoolmaster. During the first half on the show, the wall is slowly built up brick by brick and as with the eighties tour, an instrumental called "
The Last Few Bricks" that doesn't appear on the original album is played to give the stage hands extra time to build the wall. At the end of "Goodbye Cruel World", the last brick is put in place and the wall across the stage is completed. An intermission follows with photos and short bios of people lost in conflicts projected onto the wall. The second act begins with "
Hey You", which is played with minimal visuals on the wall. The band performs from behind the wall, now hidden from the audience's view. For the acoustic guitar solo piece "
Is There Anybody Out There?" a brick is removed so that guitarists Dave Kilminster and G.E. Smith are visible. As "
Nobody Home" begins, a section folds out of the wall revealing a small mock hotel room complete with a television, chair, lamp and unmade bed. Waters, in character as "Pink", sings the song while seated on a comfy chair that is on a platform extending from the wall. During "
Vera", images of
Vera Lynn are displayed on the wall, along with videos of young children being reunited with their veteran fathers. "
Bring the Boys Back Home" features
Dwight D. Eisenhower's American Society of Newspaper Editors speech. During "
Comfortably Numb", Robbie Wyckoff and Dave Kilminster stand on top of the wall as
David Gilmour did in the original tour – a performance reprised by Gilmour himself during a one-off appearance at the London O2 show on 12 May 2011. At the end of the song, the projection of the wall explodes and cinematic pillars rise. The band plays "
The Show Must Go On" dressed in black fascist attire complete with the Marching Hammers armbands. Waters' trademarked inflatable pig is released, untethered, during "
In the Flesh", and guided by remote control, floats around the venue. Spotlights shine on the audience as Waters interrogates them, pointing out the "riff raff" in the room. Waters is projected onto the wall with a machine gun shooting the audience. During "
Run Like Hell", images are displayed on the wall parodying the
iPod lowercase "i" fad. Pictures of pigs are shown next to the words "iLead", dogs next to "iProtect", sheep next to "iFollow" (pigs, dogs, and sheep indicating their roles on the Pink Floyd album
Animals), George W. Bush and other leaders next to "iBelieve",
Hitler next to "iPaint", children next to "iLearn", and gravestones next to "iPay" among others. In all of the pictures, the subjects are wearing
iPods. After this montage, the leaked footage from the
12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike is played, displaying captions of the American pilots speaking and pointing out
Reuters employees
Saeed Chmagh and
Namir Noor-Eldeen, whose cameras were mistaken for weapons; after the attack, a banner is projected onto the wall: "Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, We Will Remember You." A burst of gunfire sends it to the ground. "
Waiting for the Worms" features more of Gerald Scarfe's original animation from the film adaptation and tour, except that the infamous sequence of marching hammers has now been replaced with a new computer-generated,
cel-shaded version. "
Stop" abruptly blacks out the entire wall, with a lone spotlight shining upon the Pink doll from the beginning of the program, which is sitting atop the wall; it is then thrown off its high perch to the ground. Gerald Scarfe's animated sequence is displayed during "
The Trial". As the song reaches its steady climax and with the crowd shouting "Tear down the Wall", the wall crumbles violently from the top down amid smoke while a flurry of red paper confetti (in the shape of the bomb symbols from earlier in the show) drops onto the audience. The band emerges from behind the rubble and plays "
Outside the Wall" with a variety of acoustic instruments. (At certain shows on the Australian leg, the band plays a complete acoustic version of "
Waltzing Matilda" immediately after "Outside the Wall" as a rare encore. Similarly, at the shows in Mexico, the band performed "
Las Mañanitas" to the tune of "Another Brick in the Wall") Waters introduces the band to the crowd, they bow and then exit the stage. == Critical reception ==