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Meanwhile, in two cages at each side of the stage, Abu Ghraib-style torture scenes are re-enacted by dancers. At the end, a Bush-alike and Saddam-alike share a cigar and a cuddle. Madonna’s bull-in-a-china-shop bluntness, nay clumsiness, when it comes to serious issues is nothing new, and the aesthete in you wants to curl up and die at the naffness of it all but, as with Michael Moore, you overlook the irritant factor and decide that on balance, in an election year, anything which reminds significant number of people about the true horror of President Bush’s own world tour is to be applauded. So far, so good. A simple statement, and a straightforward one. Almost immediately, though, the messages become mixed. Despite numerous disclaimers on her latest album (and indeed in tonight’s show) – "I’m not a Christian and I’m not a Jew", "I’m not religious" — Madonna, in case you haven’t been keeping up, has got religion. Again. Not Catholicism this time, but Kabbalah, the mystical branch of Judaism. Her newfound spirituality (there are Hebrew symbols on the screen at one point, although they might conceivably read "Hello guy! Love you, sweetie!") jars uncomfortably with the songs she chooses to sing. After criticism that her 2001 shows were too light on the classics, the re-invention tour resurrects songs like "Express yourself" — a vacuous assertion of 80s positive thinking — and the vile "Material Girl". One imagines that she would now plead ironic distance, but at the height of the Reaganomics era, the line "’cos the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mister Right" certainly didn’t feel very ironic. The actual show is slightly less spectacular than the gravity-defying stunts and cutting-edge choreography of her last jaunt, but the selection of songs, admittedly, is superior. "Burning Up", her second-ever single (never a hit, but a gay disco floor-filler), is an inspired choice, and "Into the Groove", "Papa Don’t Preach", "Holiday" and in particular a genuinely uplifting "Like a Prayer" are popular choices. We’re the best audience ever, she less-than convincingly tells us in her weirdly Anglo accent (it’s all "so good to be back home" and "cheers" and "mates" now). "Hanky Panky" is given a burlesque-meets-Billy-Smart’s treatment, and you can’t help noticing that her exercise regime has given her very weird thigh muscles. Even in the Eighties, she had the "Face of Monroe, legs of Maradona", as David Stubbs unforgettably put it. Nowadays, she looks as though she ought to be in Athens, competing for shot put gold. — The Independent |
She’s
as subtle as a half-brick to the head, of course. Madonna, wearing
military fatigues and a black beret, surveys her troops. Stomping along
a suspended walkway over the heads of the audience while their leader
sings American Life, they include a man in stereotypical Muslim
attire, and a Catholic stripper nun. Behind her, projected silhouettes
of grenades, tanks and helicopters move across a backwash of blood,
occasionally melting into pictures of children crying in the rubble of a
bombsite.