The Circus arrives in town tonight with pop music's reigning princess and comeback queen as its sexy, top hat-wearing ringleader.

That would be Britney Spears' aptly-named Circus tour -- also the title of her latest and sixth studio album -- which pulls into the Air Canada Centre for the first of two back-to-back shows as part of her first roadtrip in five years.

So what to expect?

Yes, there have been a few hiccups and some drama since the March 3 launch in New Orleans, including the firing of three dancers for allegedly using drugs, and a wardrobe malfunction in Tampa during which her costume tore in the crotch area and her microphone remained on. Spears could be heard backstage declaring that her privates were "hanging out."

More recently, reports say her father, Jamie, has been instructing her to read the Bible for an hour every day before she goes on stage and banned her from using the Internet. Also, there's rumours she's dating her agent of the past four years -- although that's being denied by the Spears camp.

But mostly the Circus tour has been the continuation of a major comeback for the 27-year-old pop superstar who has sold 62 million albums worldwide in the past decade but has been in the headlines for the past 18 months for things other than her music.

Her bizarre behaviour has ranged from shaving her head, to a deranged attack on a photographer with an umbrella and finally being strapped down on a gurney and carted off for psychiatric care.

She was also involved in a custody battle for her two children with ex-husband Kevin Federline, did some time in rehab and flashed her underwearless nether regions for the paparazzi one too many times for it to be an accident.

Last November's 90-minute documentary, Britney: For the Record, which was filmed in the 60 days following the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards -- during which she won three awards -- cleared up some of what Spears was going through personally at the time.

"(Kevin) had just left me and I was devastated. And people thought that it was me going crazy and stuff like that but people shave their heads all the time. I was going through a lot, but it was just kind of me just feeling a form of a little bit of rebellion, or feeling free, or shedding stuff that had happened."

By all accounts, the Circus tour sees Spears back in form after a disastrous 2007 MTV Video Music Awards performance in which she appeared out of shape and stumbled around the stage.

She claimed in Britney: For the Record that dancing has been her salvation in recent months leading up to video shoots and for the Circus tour.

"If I have a lot of nervous energy when I start dancing, it all goes away and I just feel emotion. It's like a rollercoaster ... People think that you go through something in your life, and you need to go through therapy. For me, art is therapy because you're expressing yourself in such a spiritual way sometimes you don't need to use words to go through what you need to go through. Sometimes it's an emotion that you need to feel when you dance."

Reviews for the Circus tour have ranged from fair to good -- if not great.

"A tightly choreographed, if perfunctory performance," wrote The Associated Press, claiming parts of the two-hour performance was lipsynched.

Still, working certainly seems to be a better alternative than idleness for Spears. In Britney: For the Record, she comes across as hardworking, sweet, sad, vulnerable, fragile, lost, funny, and naive.

At one point, she proclaims to one of her doubting managers: "I'm going to get married next year and have babies, watch!" As if that's going to be the answer to all her problems.

At another time, she starts crying to the interviewer about being watched too closely by lawyers and doctors. Her father has been appointed by a court to oversee his daughters' personal and professional affairs indefinitely.

"I'm sad," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "Even when you go to jail, there's always the time when you know you're going to get out."

Let's just hope that her out-of-control phase is now a thing of the past for the sake of her two kids and herself.

"That was just a really, really bad time in my life," she says in Britney: For the Record. "It was crazy. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say I was okay."

BRITNEY WEARING CANUCK-MADE DUDS

Britney Spears' costumes, and those of her backup dancers, on her latest Circus concert tour come courtesy of the Canadian design duo Dean and Dan Caten, who are behind star-favourite label DSquared2.

"We wanted to create something much more provoking and indecent ... something animalistic and primal," the duo told Women's Wear Daily about the look for the show.

"We are confident that this tour partnership, an autobiographical tribute for one who has always been in the spotlight: scrutinized, watched, imitated, photographed, criticized and loved, will be an enormous success."

In the past, the design duo have worked with Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, Usher, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.