Madonna’s Celebration Tour salutes her history, nostalgia free

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At various times at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Thursday, a capacity crowd saw an AIDS activist, a Budweiser-drinking cowgirl, a cone-bra eroticist, a guitar-wielding ragamuffin, a fighter in a silk boxing robe and a proud, catsuit-wearing mom.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna and [checking notes] Madonna. The above were some of the personas presented at the first of back-to-back concerts by the pop superstar, inimitable cultural figure and devoted provocateur born Madonna Louise Ciccone.

The 65-year-old icon is currently on her Celebration Tour, a retrospective spectacle covering a four-decade career. Not a standard greatest-hits victory lap, the 140-minute show is a dance-heavy jukebox bio-musical. Future Canadian stops include Montreal’s Bell Centre (Jan. 18 and 20) and Vancouver’s Rogers Arena (Feb. 21).

“If you wanna know about me,” she said at one point, “you gotta know all about me.” Madonna, of course, is an exhibitionist. In other words, buckle up.

The concert began with an appearance from RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen, who served as an emcee and wore an elaborate gown either inspired by Marie Antoinette – queen knows queen – or by Madonna herself at the 1990 MTV Awards. We were told that in 1978, Madonna arrived in New York as a 19 year old with $35 to her name.

She arrived on stage at Scotiabank Arena wearing all black and a halo to sing Nothing Really Matters, a song about looking back at one’s younger self with age-won wisdom. Standing alone on a multi-level circular stage, she looked like a piece of jewellery on display.

Now chicly scruffy in chains, corset and a short, black skirt, she sang Into the Groove as dancers surrounded her. “That’s right Toronto,” she said after, “I still got it.”

That was in doubt. After her hospitalization for a bacterial infection in June, the initial North American leg of the tour was postponed. Any lasting effects of her illness were not in evidence on stage. While she did dance less than she has on past tours, the singer traversed the three catwalks in a variety of challenging footwear.

There was no live band – the music, with a few exceptions, was pre-recorded. Madonna did strap on a black Les Paul electric guitar for 1983′s Burning Up. Power chords and amplifier feedback were heard. Madonna said she had debuted the song at New York’s long-gone punk club CBGB.

In general, the material was presented in forms that were altered – stripped down here, club-remixed there – from the memorable recorded versions. This was invention, not nostalgia.

The 1986 hit Open Your Heart used the same peep-show conceit as the original video. It is pure post-ABBA pop. As the concert progressed, the songs moved from bubble gum to material that marked Madonna as an innovative pop artist with a shark-like need to constantly move forward.

Live to Tell told the story of the AIDS crisis, which touched Madonna personally. Suspended screens displayed the faces of victims including filmmaker Howard Brookner, artist friend Martin Burgoyne, tennis legend Arthur Ashe and fashionista Tina Chow. More and more faces filled the screens, representing the epidemic’s relentless advance and staggering toll. A banner at the end of the song read, “In loving memory of all the best lights we lost to AIDS.”

There were other tributes: a Prince clone appeared at the end of Like a Prayer and a silhouetted Michael Jackson danced with a Madonna-like shadow to Billie Jean and Like a Virgin. The Jackson segment seemed like an odd choice, but, then, where others might not stand by the King of Pop today, the Queen of Pop deliberately chose to.

Nepotism happened – when teenaged daughter Mercy James took to a grand piano for Bad Girl, when teenaged son David Banda strummed an acoustic guitar to Mother and Father and La Isla Bonita, when pre-teen daughter Estere break-danced and struck poses like a show-stealing champ on the catwalk during Vogue.

A punchy Erotica was choreographed for a boxing ring. Late show highlights included a thumping Ray of Light and a defiant Bitch I’m Madonna.

Some fans in the audience were old enough to have attended the Blonde Ambition Tour at Rogers Centre (then SkyDome) on May 29, 1990, when local authorities suggested that Madonna could risk arrest for her immoral performance. Madonna walked on stage, called Toronto a “fascist state” and didn’t tone down the show. (Nothing happened.)

She didn’t show fear then, and she didn’t show any at Scotiabank Arena, where Justify My Love was gloriously orgiastic and female dancers were topless for Hung Up. Apparently Madonna is not afraid of flying either: She hovered over the crowd in a box (while sensibly tethered to a railing, mind you).

During a costume change, we heard a snippet of her Billboard Women in Music speech from 2016. “The most controversial thing I’ve ever done is to stick around,” she said. A supernova who never left, Madonna recently dropped Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive from her set list. At this stage in her career, that anthem seems superfluous; its truth, self-evident.