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REVIEW: Madonna @ Wells Fargo Center, Aug. 28
Well, sure: Queen's just one of the many roles Madonna's played in her 30-year career, and the MDNA Tour features several of them: warrior, majorette, Gaultier muse, freedom lover, spiritual guide and street dancer, surrounded - as always - by a troupe of impeccably chiseled and coiffed dancers who were pressed into duty as assassins, wire-walkers and gospel singers.
REVIEW: Madonna @ Wells Fargo Center, Aug. 28
words: MJ Fine | photos: Chris Sikich
“There’s only one queen, and that’s Madonna,” Nicki Minaj concedes on “I Don’t Give A.”
Well, sure: Queen’s just one of the many roles Madonna’s played in her 30-year career, and the MDNA Tour features several of them: warrior, majorette, Gaultier muse, freedom lover, spiritual guide and street dancer, surrounded — as always — by a troupe of impeccably chiseled and coiffed dancers who were pressed into duty as assassins, wire-walkers and gospel singers.
But when the show made its North American debut on Tuesday, wide swaths of the audience didn’t automatically give the queen her due. The boos came early, when Madonna didn’t take the stage on time — as though anyone had someplace more important to be on a Tuesday at 10 p.m. Later, when she urged the crowd not to take freedom for granted, some grumbles ran through the Wells Fargo Center, as though the woman who was recently slapped with a $10.5 million lawsuit by Russian concertgoers for speaking out in support of gay rights would just shut up and play the hits.
Not on this tour, which has featured declarations of support for the young jailed women of Pussy Riot. Not in Philadelphia, which is — not coincidentally, Madonna noted Tuesday — the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence. And not on the first night of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, where one GOP woman after another tried to close the party’s gender gap.
But Madonna was never one to just shut up and play the hits — even when every single she released became a hit. For all her role-playing, many in the audience seemed to want the foxy 54-year-old to play a younger, poppier incarnation of herself, the one who reigned over the radio for so long. But you get the sense that’d be a drag, in every sense of the word.
When Tuesday’s show did look back to her early days, it was with a revisionist sensibility, which worked more often than not. “Like a Virgin,” set to the tune of “Evgeni’s Waltz,” from W.E. — the royal dud Madonna directed last year — traded camp for poignancy by stripping down to piano and voice; the Basque folk trio Kalakan added rich harmonies to a version of “Open Your Heart” that gave way to their song “Sagarra Jo.” If that frustrated some fans’ tipsy attempts to belt out the chorus, it was a victory for rest of the crowd. It made less sense to perform an abbreviated “Papa Don’t Preach” in between set pieces involving motel-room gunplay and a terrorist training camp, but the 1986 hit gave the fangirls a chance to squeal and their hardworking heroine a chance to catch her breath.
This year’s MDNA — source of eight of the show’s 20 songs — hasn’t gained much traction outside the dance clubs that are ever loyal to Her Madgesty, but the fiercely executed “Girl Gone Wild” and “Gang Bang” propelled the spectacle’s first quarter. In keeping with the segment’s transgression theme, Minaj dutifully delivered her “I Don’t Give A” rap, via pre-taped video, while dressed as a sexy nun. (Lil Wayne got into the spirit for his video cameo, too, donning a stripper-priest ensemble for “Revolver.”)
In its best moments, the show’s sound and spectacle went hand in hand. The opening overture set the mood with bells, chanting, stained-glass projections and hooded figures swinging a massive thurible. But at times, the visuals outstripped the music. It was fun to hear Madonna assert her superiority in an energetic “Express Yourself” that incorporated both Lady Gaga’s sound-alike “Born This Way” and Madonna’s riposte “She’s Not Me,” but who could keep their eyes on the stage-bound singer and her pep squad when there was a nine-man drum corps suspended in the air above them? It was a sight more thrilling than anything Christopher Nolan — not to mention Madonna ex Guy Ritchie — may have dreamed up.
Ultimately, the biggest flaw with a show that serves as “a journey / from darkness to light / from anger to love / from chaos to order,” as Madonna envisions it, is that, artistically speaking, darkness, anger and chaos are more interesting than light, love and order. On a personal level, it’s great when artists find their way to the light. But that rarely makes for a compelling final act. After all the violence, bravura and sensuality in the show’s first three sections, the fourth has to make do with grace.
Just when she should have started building to a climax, Madonna nearly let it slip away with “I’m Addicted” and “I’m a Sinner,” a couple of lesser tunes from MDNA. A rousing “Like a Prayer” was a temporary fix, but parts of the crowd seemed eager to leave during “Celebration” — a song that serves its purpose as a bonus track, but is nobody’s favorite.
Or maybe it was the time; though Madonna apologized for starting late, saying she wanted the show to be perfect, letting out at 12:20 meant some fans had to scramble for a train, pay the babysitter overtime or skimp on sleep to make it to work in the morning. But when you’re the queen, such mundane details are someone else’s problem.
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