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Madame X Tour Reviews


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From the New York Post:

Madonna kicks off tour with intimate BAM concert

Madonna was like a virgin — shiny and new all over again.

In the first full concert of her sixth decade, the 61-year-old Queen of Pop ventured into unknown terrain, launching her “Madame X” theater tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House on Tuesday night. In a 37-year career playing arenas and stadiums, after rising up from the downtown New York club scene, she was still reinventing herself.

This — the first of her 17-night stand at BAM ending Oct. 12 — was indeed uncharted territory for a woman who has done it all. Playing in such an intimate space after all these years, though, the pop diva of all pop divas was adamant about you not sharing videos and pics of her so up close and personal.

Her no-cellphone policy required you to put your device in a pouch that wouldn’t allow you access to it until after the show or at designated phone stations outside of the theater.

The Material Mom of six has gone from “Papa Don’t Preach” to “Mama Don’t Play.” She can still out-diva any opera diva on the planet.

But as fans lined up around Fort Greene’s Ashland Place to get to the opera house entrance on Lafayette Street — no doubt slowed by having to put their phones in those YONDR pouches — it was the kind of New York scene befitting a New York icon. When it was announced that she wouldn’t even go on until 10:30 p.m. — despite the 8:30 start time on the ticket — fans didn’t even blink an eye.

They knew the drill: You wait until Madonna is ready.

When she finally took the stage around 10:45 p.m. to sing “God Control,” her anti-gun anthem from her “Madame X” album, some of her old fans who had been napping on their partners’ shoulders needed to heed the song’s call to “wake up” in a very literal sense.

But just as Madonna wanted to keep it old-school with her no-cellphone policy — which was refreshing and relatively painless — the night was also a concession to the fact that she is, well, older now.

That could be felt in her most throwback moment, when she took a Polaroid selfie of herself and sold it to old pal Rosie O’Donnell — her costar in 1992’s “A League of Their Own” — for a thousand dollars.

But it could also be measured in the fact that this theater tour is not just a creative curve in a career where every move has been calculated, but it’s a reimagining of herself as an artist at a time when she can no longer do the choreography-heavy work that arenas and stadiums would demand of her.

Let’s be real: There’s only so far Madonna had to walk from one side of the stage to the other at BAM.

As shrewd of an agent as Madame X — the spy alter ego she adopted for her latest album — is, she had her dancers do the heavy lifting for her. Instead, she emphasized the performance art that has always been a part of her concerts at the expense of the moves that she honed when dance teacher Martha Graham first coined her “Madame X.”

The setting and the sensibility turned up the theatrics of “Madame X” songs such as “Dark Ballet,” which, with its nod to Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” came to life in a way that made it dig into your soul more than the recording could. And make no mistake, this is a “Madame X” show. A good 80-85% of the two-hour-plus show is dedicated to her new album.

That won’t make this tour the go-to show for the casual Madonna fan, but diehards hardly seemed to mind that she only gave you bits of faves such as “Express Yourself” and “La Isla Bonita” while concentrating on “Madame X” tracks such as “Medellín,” “Crazy” and “Come Alive” — the latter of which did just that with a gospel flourish that set the stage for “Like a Prayer” later.

“Like a Prayer” and “Vogue” were two of the few straight-up Madonna classics that she really performed in full. But the highlight was another Madge hit, 1997’s “Frozen,” that she did as her oldest child, 22-year-old daughter Lourdes, did the dancing on video projections to keep it in the family groove.

 

https://nypost.com/2019/09/18/madonna-kicks-off-tour-with-intimate-bam-concert/

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From The New York Times:

Madonna Is Still Taking Chances

Her Madame X show reimagines pop spectacle for a theater stage, merging her newest music and calls for political awareness with striking intimacy.

 

“I’m not here to be popular. I’m here to be free,” Madonna declared to a packed, adoring audience on Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House. It was the premiere of her Madame X tour, named after the album she released in June that she has said was influenced by the music in Lisbon, her adopted home. The show follows her decades of arena spectacles by scaling the same kind of razzle-dazzle — dancers! costumes! video! choir! — for a theater stage.

Unlike jukebox musicals or “Springsteen on Broadway,” Madame X is a concert focusing on new songs and the present moment. In other words, Madonna is still taking chances. She will reach arena-size attendance in only a handful of venues on the eight-city tour, but with much longer engagements; the Gilman Opera House holds 2,098, and she booked 17 shows there, through Oct. 12. Onstage, “selling” a selfie Polaroid to an audience member who happened to be Rosie O’Donnell, she claimed, “I’m not making a dime on this show.”

Concertgoers arrived to what was billed as a phone-freeexperience. Cellphones and smart watches were locked into bags at the door, though quickly unlocked afterward. It helped prevent online spoilers; it certainly removed the distractions of waving screens. (No photography was permitted, including press.)

As both album and show, “Madame X” is Madonna’s latest declaration of a defiant, self-assured, flexible identity that’s entirely comfortable with dualities: attentive parent and sexual adventurer, lapsed Catholic and spiritual seeker, party girl and political voice, self-described “icon” and self-described “soccer mom,” an American and — more than ever — a world traveler.

Yes, she is 61, but her music remains determinedly contemporary, with the drum-machine sounds of trap, collaborations with hip-hop vocalists (Quavo and Swae Lee, shown on video) and the bilingual, reggaeton-flavored Latin pop sometimes called urbano (with the Colombian singer Maluma, also shown on video). The concert, with most of its music drawn from the “Madame X” album, was packed with pronouncements, symbols and enigmatic vignettes to frame the songs. Madonna often wore an eye patch with an X on it, no doubt a challenge to her depth perception as a dancer.

By the time Madonna had completed just the first two songs, she had already presented an epigraph from James Baldwin — “Artists are here to disturb the peace” — that was knocked out onstage by one of the concert’s recurring figures, a woman (sometimes Madonna herself) at a typewriter.

Gunshots introduced “God Control,” which moves from bitter mourning about gun deaths to happy memories of string-laden 1970s disco, while Madonna and dancers appeared in glittery versions of Revolutionary War finery, complete with feathered tricorn hats, only to be confronted by police with riot shields.“Dark Ballet” had Joan of Arc references, a montage of gothic cathedrals and scary priests, a synthesizer excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and Madonna grappling with masked dancers, until cops pulled her off the piano she had been perched on. The signifiers were already piling up.

And there were more. Film-noir detectives pursued and interrogated Madonna in another disco-tinged song, “I Don’t Search I Find”; “Crave,” which warns, “My cravings get dangerous,” flaunted a full-sized disco ball. A pair of robotic but sinuous dancers, with red lights for eyes, flanked Madonna as she sat at a piano for the ominous “Future,” while the video screen filled with images of urban and environmental destruction. She surrounded herself with a choir of brightly robed women and geometric Arabic designs in “Come Alive,” which used the metal castanets and triplet rhythm of Moroccan gnawa music to back her as, once again, Madonna’s lyrics rejected unwanted opinions and restrictions.

The songs Madonna chose from her past were mostly exhortations and pushbacks, sometimes coupled with direct political statements. She sang part of “Papa Don’t Preach,” reversing its decision to “keep my baby,” then spoke directly about supporting abortion rights. Dancing while surrounded by video imagery of pointing fingers, she revived “Human Nature,” which already testified — a full 25 years ago — to Madonna’s tenacity and determination to express herself uncensored. When it ended, her daughters Mercy James, Estere and Stella were onstage, and the singers and a full-throated audience shared an a cappella “Express Yourself.”

The concert’s unquestioned showstopper was “Frozen,” a somber ballad from the 1998 album “Ray of Light” that offers healing: “If I could melt your heart, we’d never be apart.” Madonna appeared as a tiny figure onstage, surrounded by giant video projections of a dancer moving from a self-protective clutch to a tentative, then joyful unfurling and back. It was her oldest daughter, Lourdes, affirming the family connection in movement.

Since 2017 Madonna has lived in Lisbon, where her son David plays soccer, and she spoke about savoring the city’s music: the Portuguese tradition of fado and music from Portugal’s former empire, particularly from the Cape Verde Islands near Senegal. One of the show’s most elaborate backdrops simulated a club in Lisbon.

But appreciation doesn’t equal mastery. Madonna was backed by the Portuguese guitarra player Gaspar Varela, the grandson of the fado singer Celeste Rodrigues, in an earnest, awkward fado-rooted song, “Killers Who Are Partying” from the “Madame X” album; she also performed a Cape Verdean classic, “Sodade,” made famous by Cesária Évora.

Reminding the audience that she had sung in Cape Verdean Creole and other languages, Madonna boasted, “This is a girl who gets around. This is a girl who does her homework.” But in the songs themselves, she only sounded like a well-meaning tourist.

Madonna was more suited to the harder beat of “Batuka” a song based on the matriarchal, call-and-response Cape Verdeantradition of batuque. Backed by more than a dozen batuque drummers and singers — Orquestra Batukadeiras — and doing some hip-shimmying batuque moves, Madonna conveyed the delight of her discovery, even as the hand-played beat gave way to electronic percussion.

Forty-one musicians, dancers and singers appeared throughout the two-hour-plus show, which came with the same wardrobe changes as any of Madonna’s large-scale extravaganzas (one, before “Vogue,” was executed before the audience, shielded by a dressing table). The singer wasn’t onstage for one of the most powerful dance moments, a break between acts when a row of performers convulsed gracefully at the lip of the stage to irregular breaths, set to a recording of Madonna intoning lyrics from “Rescue Me.”

Madonna spoke to and with the audience repeatedly, taking advantage of the intimacy of the room to tell bawdy jokes, apologize for starting the show late and sip a fan’s beer. But in songs and stage patter, she sometimes conflated self-realization and self-absorption with social progress. Contrasting freedom and slavery after “Come Alive,” she announced that slavery “begins with ourselves,” forgetting that the slave trade was not the same as being “slaves to our phones.”

Yet with Madonna, the spirit is more about sounds and images than literalism. “I Rise,” which ends both the album and the concert, samples a speech by Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. then goes on to some clumsy lyrics. But in a small theater, with a gospelly beat, raised fists, images of protests worldwide, a rainbow flag, and Madonna and her troupe parading up the aisle — close enough for fans to touch — there was no denying the conviction.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/arts/music/madame-x-madonna.html

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MADAME X-Static Process: Madonna sets herself free in darkly joyous theater-show debut

Source: BoyCulture - New York City - 17 Sep. 2019
Matthew Rettenmund

Tonight was Madonna's Madame X tour debut in Brooklyn, and it's safe to say the crowd was feeling it — because Madonna was feeling it.

After so many rumors of an imaginary short show that could be dubbed Disarray of Light, Madame X turned out to be a thematically cohesive, at turns effusively warm and chillingly foreboding, triumph of her spirit, a near-total departure from her over-the-top arena and stadium tours, a show that clearly challenged her and invited her audience to reimagine the woman we so often see as an untouchable icon.

All my friends and I arrived between 7:30-8:00 p.m., having been urged to show up by 8:30 p.m. by our Ticketmasters. Figuring the venue's no-cameras policy (your phones are entombed in Yondr cases) and ridiculous ticketing warnings ("You can only use your phone as your ticket ... unless you have a hard ticket ... and you have to just remember where you're sitting!") would mean a clusterfuck of an entry process, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it all was. You just get in line, staffers give you a hard ticket of sorts once they see your seat on your phone, your phone is Yondr-swallowed, you go through a metal detector (be sure they do not put your Yondr in a bin with anyone else's as they're indistinguishable), then you're in.

It was crowded, but not a mob scene. It was a little scary that her dancer Marvin arrived through the lobby around 9:45 p.m., and it was funny to see Anderson Cooper slither in because while he was safe from selfies with no cellphones around, he was still a moving target that did not desire to be hit up for small talk.

Inside: It's alarming how close the front row is to the stage, and to Madonna. I had asked one of the frail-looking BAM employees if they truly felt confident they could hold the crowds at bay, and she told me Madonna would have security between the front row and the stage, which is only a few steps up. Instead, she had her main security guy we have all seen 100 times — and that's it, though I've been told there are hidden precautions. It just appears that the only thing keeping people from jumping onstage is the honor system, and fucking Roger Friedman was in the house! Honestly, I think I'd have let people use cellphones and spent more energy on hiring a wall of brutes to keep me safe, but I'm not Madame X, I'm Monsieur XY, and I guess I'm more fearful than Madonna is ... of people like me.

I didn't see a single camera or phone in the orchestra — not even Kevin Mazur or any house photographer, not even press. Zip. I later found out that people on upper levels were able to use the Yondr areas to unlock their phones and then go back to their seats without re-Yondring them. So whoever's in charge upstairs was asleep at the wheel, and there will likely be plenty of videos of the show from a distance. In truth, I don't buy the argument that not taking pictures means you're more present; it's simply a matter of preference.

That said, the one thing I noticed about my enjoyment of the show, sans phone or camera, was that I danced my ass off nonstop.

Still, depriving us of phones — Madonna wickedly teased us about it at one point, which made me laugh and proved that the decision was at least as much a power move as it was a desire for connection — didn't do away with the most annoying part of any concert: Being seated near a roaring drunk straight guy thrilled to be so close to Madonna as a show of status, but who also heckled her any time she talked politics. This is the guy who told my Asian friend he thought he was in The Hangover in spite of him looking nothing like Ken Jeong. I still can't believe he didn't rush the stage, but his sexy straight friend seemed to be a good influence. Then there was the straight Republican couple behind me trying to tell the gay couple next to them that Trump isn't bothered by gay people — even as the Trump Administration just this week denied a kid citizenship because he was born outside the U.S. to two gay parents who are U.S. citizens, arguing he was born out of wedlock! Fuck off. Trump may not care, but it's not in the sense that this doofus meant.

Anyway, in spite of well-documented sweating of the details all over her Instagram, the show kicked off at a relatively timely 10:45 p.m. (The most recent advertised time was 9:30 p.m., but the wait in this festive, small venue isn't bad at all and she — GASP! — apologized. The woman who is always on Grace Jones time joked, "I don't mean to do it ... I'll never do it again ..." before winking.)

One of my only criticisms of the show is it has an extremely weak opening. The words of James Baldwinare projected overhead as an old-fashioned typewriter bangs them out, a lone dancer moving to each stroke before being metaphorically gunned down. Then he does it again, all the same words and a few more. Then, he's gunned down ... and he does it again. Finally getting all the way through, the static kickoff gave way to a killer "God Control" that is close to what she gave us at Gay Pride, with lots of stomping Hustle choreography, though Madonna's pirate lewk is new — making her, one would imagine, an ahoy!-toy. (The eyepatch made appearances off and on — literally.)

Next is "Dark Ballet" (or, as that Good Morning America hussy would say, "Dark Bullay") which finds her showing off her Atelier Elizabeth threads while writhing on a piano before she is brutally arrested by riot police. This reminded me of #secretprojectrevolution.

Imprisoned in a recessed circle — "Get outta my cell!" she snaps at the pigs — she launches into a sizzling rendition of a song I thought I never needed to hear again but did: "Human Nature." Madonna is not sprinting across the stage anymore, but is as gesturally articulate and witty as ever, and when she walks herself upside down in the cell, it at once calls to mind the music video, a human peace sign and her Re-Invention tour headstand.

It bears mentioning that her twins popped up here, sauntering, bewigged and spitting out dialogue on command. I wonder if some will find their presence during a song littered with expletives worth condemning. But ... it's Madonna, so, yeah, they will. Daily Mail, take it away.

"I think my manager is here tonight," she cooed. (He was.) Then she hissed, "He just wants me to sing hits." Perhaps as a concession to the reality that we all want to hear not only new but old songs, she surprised even those of us who've been searching for and finding spoilers with a chunk of "Express Yourself" sung (perfectly!) a cappella. I think it's wise of her to cave and throw us pieces of classic songs like that. It totally satisfied my sweet tooth for the past.

Her hair guru Andy Lecompte, dressed as a doctor, escorted her behind a dressing mirror so that we (even we in the front) could only see Madonna's killer, fish-netted legs sticking out as she was given a not-so-quick-change onstage in real time. Ironically, she was talking about how she wanted to do a theater tour so as to connect with us — while shielded from us. Classical music played, so she joked that her legs were spread so we could hear Mozart from her pussy. "I'm a classic bitch," she confessed.

She did not indulge in any actual stand-up, but she did offer us the joke: "What do you call a man with a small penis? I don't know, because I've never called a man with a small penis."

Unveiled in her straight blonde wig, eyepatch and black trench, it was time for a snappy version of "Vogue" staged on stairs (a regular up-down suite) to remind people she made music prior to Madame X. It brought down the house, and nearly did bring down the upper levels, which swayed like background shots from 1974's Earthquake. (One of the dancers even had a Victoria Principal 'fro!)

This segued perfectly into "I Don't Search I Find," a song that's probably more fun to hear than it is a song that demands to be performed live. I did like the film noir, '40s-NYC projections, and the Burberry spy coats were chic.

Madonna then took a Polaroid of herself (earlier, a dancer pretended to take an upskirt shot of Madonna using a Polaroid — it was such a throwback I was waiting for her to whip out a Commodore 64 or to challenge us to a game of Pong) and teased that she would give it to one of us. Sadly, Rosie O'Donnell(other celebs spotted: Spike Lee and Debi Mazar) offered her $1,000 for it, so she got it. I guess the idea is we're all supposed to bid on the Polaroid each show, and Madonna will probably donate that cash to a charity, like she did with her dollar bills from the MDNA tour. I'm not sure I'd want it because modern Polaroids are incapable of taking sharp, clear, Warholian-wonderful snaps like the '80s Maripol versions, but bring your rent money if you want it.

Because we deserved it, she gave us a bit of "Papa Don't Preach," but pointedly sang, "I'm not keepin' my baby." (I shouted, "I'll take it!" — she gave me wonderful eye contact several times throughout, seeming to appreciate my energy.) She talked about how nine states are attempting to get Roe v Wade overturned and stressed the importance of a woman's autonomy.

"American Life" is probably her most hated Top 40 hit, but as she did at Gay Pride, she sang the hell out of it and it fits so well in this show. The staging included bloodied combat fatigues dropping from the ceiling, and it ended with her dancers solemnly carrying a coffin, presumably of a metaphorical dead soldier, across the stage as some sort of Portuguese dirge played.

Two female dancers peeled off from the pallbearers, engaging in a violent dance that ended with love.

One of the show's clear highlights came next: "Batuka." Coming to the stage from the aisles, the Batukadeiras brought us into a place of pure spiritual joy before Madonna appeared high above in a truly stunning navy costume (legs up to here, still) and a gorgeous brunette wig that moved with her. It's one of her best-ever tour looks, and she had a ball singing this song with the women.

Madonna recycled a bit of her sentiments about moving to Lisbon for a short speech at this point, which seemed to invite some riff-raff to shout out to her to get her attention, but she was on a roll and never became Bedtime Stories Pajama Party pissed off.

After asking me and the guy next to me to define "fado" — we choked, so I told her, "Teach us!" — she then sang a lovely fado song apparently called "Fado pechincha" as a tribute to the late, great Celeste Rodrigues (1923-2018), who she met while preparing her album. She did this with instrumental assistance from — who's that boy? — Rodrigues's great-grandson Gaspar Varela, a beautiful and talented kid who is this tour's Chris Finch.

Honestly, Madonna was at her very best with this and the other fado material. Her voice is rich and her adoration for the form bleeds through every note.

"Killers Who Are Partying" may be lyrically tone-deaf to those who refuse to believe people of privilege can imagine what it's like to be oppressed, but its execution on this tour is sterling. Madonna sings it astonishingly well, and her intention is much clearer in person than on the record — her caveat about knowing what she is and what she's not comes through loud and clear. It was a stunning rendition.

With "Crazy" (I think this may have been the point when she was standing on a piano being manually turned and I cringed, fearing she'd tumble), an improvised snippet of a song welcoming us to her fado club (great set, like a '50s Minnelli-directed musical), a bit of "La Isla Bonita" and a gorgeous morna (from Cape Verde) song entitled "Sodade" — one of her best vocals ever — the show felt like a true window into how Madonna sees Lisbon, and also how she views musical collaboration in a city she raves is filled with it.

"I see you, girl," she said around this point to someone in the audience, and I was thinking, "We hear you, girl."

For "Medellín," Madonna came directly in front of me, nearly hitting me with her riding crop, and did the little booty pop from the Grammys choreography with me! She then cha-chaed into the audience past me, turned around and came back ... and I, of course, discreetly touched her arm. I hope she doesn't bring me up on cha-cha-charges. It was a thrill, not gonna lie.

Okay, here is a hot tip: The next banter moment consisted of Madonna leaving the stage and plopping down next to a guy — James — in the front row (right side, stage left) for an extensive interview. James was brilliant! He said all the right things with just enough sass to be funny without upstaging or making her uncomfortable or turning her off. Madonna accidentally told a joke when she asked James if he were one of those mean fans on IG who says things like, "'I'm not gonna see your show unless you sing,' I don't know, 'Hard Candy.'" Nobody has ever made that threat, but it was still another example of her being cute and cuddly.

"Extreme Occident" found Madonna being wheeled around on pieces of her stairs, pushing the limits of repurposing, but it was around then that I was really focusing on how simplistic the set pieces are. Seeing human beings pushing the stairs around, no hydraulics, brought home the intimacy of the show. And it is brave, in the end, to be Madonna and not rely on the splashy stuff nearly as much as all of her other recent tours have. It underscored her musicality, and her gameness to dial it all in.

That said, I never want to hear about life being a circle again.

Probably the only true disappointment for me was not her dropping of "Easy Ride" nor her dropping of "You Must Love Me" — both of which had been rehearsed and discarded — but her relegation of "Rescue Me" to a Robert Longo-inspired modern dance number; the song only exists in her spoken-word voice-over, a major missed opportunity to provide longtime fans with a hands-free orgasm.

Spoke too soon! "Frozen" — delivered in her "I Rise" (Audio) music video look behind a transparent scrim — was better than sex, her best vocal on this song ever, and was enhanced by eye-popping black-and-white footage of her daughter Lola dancing. The interplay between solemn, stock-still Madonna and her fluidly sensual daughter's image was so striking; this will stick with me, and — I promise — you, for a long time.

A cellist introduces "Come Alive," one of her new album's catchiest numbers, and it was brought to life with seriously colorful robes galore. Never has Madonna been more geeked performing live than on this tour.

Stating she's not here to be popular, but to be free, Madonna sat at and played, albeit in a limited way, a grand piano as she de-reggaed (and vastly improved) "Future." Loved this new take, but not as much as her clubtastic airing of the Tracy Young remixof "Crave" — what a banger! Wham!-BAM, thank you, ma'am.

No Madonna concert is complete minus one of her best-ever songs, and this show's "Like a Prayer" — delivered in a monk robe — was a stripped-down satisfier, proof that Eurovision was a fluke and that she can still sing the heaven out of this religious experience of a tune.

The curtain closes only once at the end, so do not expect multiple encores. Instead, she ends on the relentlessly hopeful "I Rise." Spectacularly, after leading us through what feels like a lyrical revival meeting, Madonna simply marches right down the center of the orchestra, completely accessible to all with aisle seats for good-touch.

Sometimes, when Madonna does a lot of new material in a show, I can see how it may be offputting to casual fans. I defy anyone with an open mind and open ears to begrudge her the desire to air these new gems. With just enough nods to her past, Madonna is too busy reveling in the present and making plans to go into the future to get mired down by deep cuts and too many of yesteryear's hits.

There is always next time for a hits tour.

Madame X is one of the biggest gambles Madonna has ever taken as a live performer (oh, I take it all back, what if she sang "Gambler"?), and it's one that pays off in the form of a show that perfectly showcases her musicality, her curiosity, her understanding of how to hold an audience and her resolve to be an artist who instigates, who "disturbs the peace," who leads and whose legacy is always whatever comes next.

 

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Madonna surprises with the launch of ambitious, intimate Madame X show

Source: Showbizz 411 - New York City - 17 Sep. 2019
Roger Friedman

It turns out Madonna — the queen of re-invention —  is human. She admitted last night during the first performance of her Madame X show at Brooklyn's Howard Gilman Opera house: "The one thing I need is sleep. I'm tired." She added that she could use a nap.

But the 61 year old pop icon didn't show any signs of weariness last night as she launched this ambitious, complex production. The good news about Madonna's Madame X show is that there is no bad news. Not really. So everyone can relax. There's no incentive to throw tomatoes.

Quite the opposite: I was impressed, and I think anyone who stops into the Gilman will be surprised to find Madonna, in a stripped down setting, is actually real and just a celebrity hologram. She's very endearing in an intimate venue. Also considering that this performance of "Madame X" was the very first, you have to give her credit. She's producing a Broadway show in progress.

Indeed, if we come back to "Madame X" in a month, it's going to be even more together, which isn't to say it's not a compelling two hour and fifteen minute entertainment now. But right now "Madame X" is like several Broadway shows happening at  once. Most of it works, some of it doesn't. It needs time to gel. The pieces are good, but they don't all fit together yet. (The sets are Broadway-level, even better, with terrific lighting. The staging runs from elaborately ornamental to elegantly minimalist. There are excellent video projections, too.)

What we get theme wise are more than a few things: Madonna's lifelong grappling with Catholicism; her adventures in Lisbon as a "soccer mom," as she says; her discovery in Portugal of that country's music and that of Cape Verde, off the coast of Africa; political Madonna, who is advocating for LGBTQ, women's rights, abortion rights, and gun control. Plus modern dance, jazz and ballet, and even a dance video from Madonna's daughter, Lourdes. That's a lot of themes.

A lot of this is set to showcase songs from the "Madame X" album, which didn't sell well and didn't come off well when it arrived. Surprisingly, those songs have been made into convincing theatrical pieces. You see, Madonna is not performing her greatest hits. If you're coming to the Gilman for "Like a Virgin," you're in the wrong place. (There are financial reasons, too, for ditching the early hits– she didn't write them and she's probably tired of paying those songwriters.)

This doesn't mean there aren't nods to the 80s Madonna. Early in the show there's a lovely a cappella moment of "Express Yourself." You will also hear "Papa Don't Preach," "Frozen," "La Isla Bonita," and, very successfully, "Vogue."

Last night's show started an hour late, at 10:30pm, but Madonna did apologize and explain that later. There are other details that I'll explore later this week in a real review. Last night, Rosie O'Donnell and Debi Mazar, her good friends, showed up to give support, and Rosie–who received cheers from the audience– got be part of a little "business." The audience loved it.

And that audience– a group of people from Asia had flown here, and used Madonna's lateness for a nap. The woman behind me came from Paris. There was a crowd from Brazil.

(Also be warned: your phone is locked into an airtight container upon arrival. It must be unlocked at the end of the show. No photos, no videos, no social media. Hence, no photo to go with this story.)

By the time you get to the last number, it's well worth it. "Like a Prayer" finishes the show proper and leaves everyone on a high. But again, I think Madonna is doing some interesting work here. She's trying pull off something much tougher than her arena or stadium shows, and you can already see the payoffs. She's making a connection with the audience while ideas are settling in. The fans will love to watch it, and out of this will evolve a butterfly. I'd be first in line to return.

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Madonna at War

Her 17-date Brooklyn residency forgoes many of the greatest hits and fleshes out her Madame X secret-agent character to spectacular effect.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/madonna-madame-x-bam-review-world-saving-spectacle/598507/

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“With her Madame X Tour, Madonna has redefined modern pop concerts as we know them and puts young superstars in the shade with her daring routines and incredible vocal range.

SHE’S never been one to play by the rules.

And,  in her Madame X theatre tour,  Madonna took the book, tore it up and spat it out.

Her voice was impressive and on key throughout — shooting down any doubts which surfaced at Eurovision where she was let down by a technical failure.

She danced, writhed and did a headstand in the  two-hour, 15-minute  performance and barely looked out of breath.

If anyone doubted whether Madonna still had it, I can safely say that  she most definitely does. In spades.” - The Irish Sun

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Madonna brings freewheeling intimacy to Madame X tour

She also explained the reason for the show's tardy 11 p.m. start time: 'I have an injury. I have six children. I have a lot of wigs.'

https://ew.com/concerts/2019/09/20/madonna-madame-x-tour-review-brooklyn/

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