Jessie Ware @ O2 Apollo, Manchester, 23 Mar

Londoner Jessie Ware, like many others from the capital, is a Manchester United supporter; her mum, who has recently become an unlikely podcast star, is from around here, and it’s always lent her shows in the city an extra resonance, whether they were at Parklife Festival – an event she has a real affinity for, and that she’s slated to return to in June – or headline gigs that have taken in everywhere from the Cathedral to the Academy. This evening sees her sell out arguably Manchester’s most famous venue, the Apollo.

Ware somehow turned out a stellar third record, Glasshouse, last year, in-between becoming a mother and a semi-professional foodie; her podcast Table Manners has been a roaring success so far, and she also keeps popping up in our Facebook newsfeeds trying to sell us those fresh vegetable subscription services. She might reasonably have been forgiven if she'd lacked time to ensure that this tour’s stage show matched up to the splendour of some of the venues it’s visiting (tonight’s included), but she’s delivered on that front, too.

Backed by a huge screen that presents the show as if it were an old film and prefacing each of its three acts – Exposition, Climax, Denouement – with quotes plucked from Edward Thomas’ poem I Built Myself a House of Glass, Ware’s band provide hefty instrumentation on the tracks even if they’re physically kept in the shadows; the spotlight, instead, is entirely on Ware herself. The set neatly charts her progression over the past few years; Running and If You’re Never Gonna Move from her 2012 debut Devotion remain towering dance tracks, whilst highlights from 2014’s Tough Love, a record that plays like Sade’s Lovers Rock for the iPhone generation, are absent entirely until the woozy comedown of the third act.

There’s a palpable lag right in the middle of the show when Ware drops a slew of new material at once alongside deep cuts from Devotion, either because you suspect the crowd isn’t well-versed enough in it for it to maintain their interest or because, given that it’s a Friday evening, they weren’t especially keen to hear any acoustic reinventions. It's a shame, because Glasshouse’s highlight, Last of the True Believers, is presented in handsomely stripped-back fashion tonight. Still, tonight’s less about the audience than it is about Ware’s ability to look as if she belongs on stages of this size – in that respect, it’s an unqualified success.