With the widely lambasted Olympics now imminent, an endless troll around supposedly insurmountable metal feels strangely apt as scalpers bark and scowl on every corner of the 'Park's hellacious path. You sense business may be slow, if not stationary this time around...
As I say, I can't even pretend to profess to being all that enthused by these sorts of shows and indeed, to then be exposed to around an hour of Bruno fucking Mars on a loop unfeasibly more functional than my circulatory system post-Latitude, endearment becomes progressively implausible. Instead replaced by an unconcealed ennui, her Madgesty sure knows how to treat her most staunch of scullions many of whom have not only forked out inordinate sums to make this show but came, saw, and bought the equally exorbitant T-shirt. Observing a middle-aged generation emblazoned with the cockamamie acronym MDNA is humorous in itself, if almost as preposterous as the prospect of Madonna's yobbish 11-year-old rocking a choreographed limp onstage to a muffled and bludgeoned Open Your Heart. Oh wait...
And wait – enduringly – we must. Conversely however, seeing is easier scribed than done. The stage – that from last weekend's Wireless, albeit cloaked in a tacky black – is nowhere near the right sort of height to accommodate for the multitudinous throng she's somehow managed to attract. Some tiptoe, pints at tipping point whilst others seem to spend more time aimlessly scouring the trampled dirt underfoot. Modern-day attention spans are short at the best of times and here they're stumped out as though fully smoked Pall Mall fag. Then, at long last, it appears as though the show may be about to start.
Shoddy pseudo-Shaolin monks appear, only to haul a gargantuan thurible above the heads of those ensnared in the despicably employed Gold Circle (shan't delve into that particular debacle) yet disconcertingly, despite all the provocatively blasphemous imagery – MDNA is etched into a crucifix. Jesus didn't perish for this – the Clint Mansell-cum-Kabbalah soundtracking is scarcely audible. And Lord knows that's not down to a profusion in whooping.
The concerted parallel between MDNA and this fabricated cross-culturing of Catholicism and Buddhism only serves to confound and although religiosity may have propelled Madonna to stardom (Papa Don't Preach, Like A Prayer, Ray of Light, etc.) the spirituality she now seems to have devoted herself to sits awkwardly. Certainly when she later implores we banish all prejudicial opinion she angers a fair few. "How dare she tell us how to live our lives?" a disgruntled zealot proclaims and indubitably we'd rather hear Holiday, or Material Girl, or a version of Hung Up not butchered by excessive braggadocio, yet it's her comparison between this and the smashing of apples (or Sagarra Jo! as she repeatedly, repugnantly thrums during an utterly abysmal, Rocco-featuring Open Your Heart) that's yet more irritating than this preaching from the boy's Mama.
The show itself is hacked up into four chapters (perhaps she'd rather we wrote Gospels), the first being Transgression. In this segment, she'll shout and swear a load, romping inappropriately for a lady of Germanotta's age; let alone fifty-three to the dreary minimal electro of Gang Bang. Toting a fully plastic arsenal, she snarls: "I said drive bitch/ And while you're at it, die bitch" in a wholly embarrassing instance, of which there are infinite. As she engages in some dodgy sitcom combat semi-nude backing dancers fall from the sky, LED blood splattering across a backdrop the full effect of which is scuppered by sunlight. Indeed it's well before this fully dwindles that disinterest begins to brood among her most loyal disciples (again, revert thy gaze to that ticket price if ever starting to doubt any allegiance).
All the extraneous obscenity (gimps on sticks, AK-47s at the altar and so on), and the pointlessly provocative middle finger, and all the ostentation however appear no more intricate than the courting of inessential controversy, and as this section assumes the aesthetic of a West End show you can't help but think of Gaga's The Monster Ball. Madonna's even concocted (or rather cribbed) a rudimentary Motel scene. And this is perhaps the primary qualm with this part of what already feels a washout – drizzle aside: as far as petulance and arguably now plagiarism is concerned, the buck stops with Madonna. The Born This Way Ball is indelibly penned in for two nights at Twickenham, one of which is long since sold out and even in this era of staccato instants, iEverything and general inhumanity, Gaga remains relevant whereas Madonna? Well, incorporating the chorus of Born This Way into a deformed Express Yourself is not only puerile performance but also exacerbates Madonna's lack of hit, of which tonight she couldn't possibly even claim to execute more than six. For as with Jay-Z's abdicating upon the Watch The Throne tour, the mantle of power passed down to Kanye West Madonna here not only illustrates quite how far behind she has fallen in recent times but does so flailing limbs in the direction of her logical successor. She can cling to the contemporary all she wants (the enlarged, screened spectres of Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne and M.I.A. all loom sporadically beyond her molecular figure to mouth out of sync rhymes) although she's lost it. And you can take whatever you want from it, but rest assured there's no positive connotation to be had. She better take a firm clutch of that I Don't Give A... lyric "I'm gonna be OK/ I don't care what the people say", because for many this may well be the final straw.
The following piece in this factious disarray of a puzzle is entitled Prophecy, and features the worthless futuro-balladry of the heinously meaningless Turn Up The Radio (the most pertinent point of which – the branding of a dishevelled she as a "stronzetta" as she tumbles into the back of a cab in the vid – is of course omitted) alongside a painful tease of a montage known as Turning Up the Hits. First of all, they're just as inaudible as every mishit to have preceded them. (She will in due coure return, yelling: "I can't hear you!" Oh the irony.) Secondly, each glitchy glimpse purveys a reconstruction in both character and career that proves disproportionately preferable to her present modus operandi. Heck; she's so committed to cavorting with backing dancers these days that she – as with her Trinidadian cohort – relies so heavily on backing track that her singing ability can't even be called into question. During innumerable video interludes she doesn't condescend to materialise, and when she does deign to sing it's obfuscated by smutty Auto-Tune anyhow, another element inherent to the production that she's incontrovertibly too haggard for. Similarly, when she picks up a Les Paul to superfluously strum its effect is negligible at best and a visual nuisance. It's presumably plugged into the mic jack at any rate.
To requite the Gaga parley, despite a prerecorded Minaj confirming: "There's only one Queen, and that's Madonna. Bitch" in what seems direct and explicit slander, that our hostess with the leastest swiftly abandons the Broadway format again accentuates the supremacy of Stefani. Moreover in coming out to Express Yourself in FAO Schwarz toy soldier-slash-cheerleader garb, she flatters to deceive once more in this time swindling another Stefani – and more precisely Paul Hunter's Hollaback Girl directional.
Neither director of her own show nor in a position of enough power to weather this meteorologically adverse monsoon summer of ours, as the rain thickens spirits dampen further. "Rain rain go away" she ingenuously cries yet boos have begun to reside at the back. For although money can hire you a 'sterilisation team' (yeah, she reportedly went and recruited one to prevent über fans – can only now be but a handful – stealing away with her DNA) and with it purportedly prevent cloning, it can't preserve you from the elements it seems, nor the inescapable ageing phenomenon with which every human is plagued. Still, that of course doesn't stop her from dusting down the old monochrome lingerie for a catwalk spectacular take on Vogue. She takes it too far once she unprecedentedly slips down loosely fitting trousers, although it's a joyous frisk in comparison with most of the evening. It's about as close as we come to any sense of spectacle, and it's as terrible as her withered, ultimately rubbish vocals: Like A Virgin is mangled together with Abel Korzeniowski's Evgeni's Waltz in what is a redundant balladeering redux of one which may have otherwise been OK as she plays the pained maiden writhing on the floor, soused with sanguinary red spotlight hues.
By ten – or rather by the time of her excruciating Nobody Knows Me intermission in which swastikas flicker behind the dramatised brutalisation of oranged jailbirds in perverse imagery as desperate as the show itself – I've found myself desperately, if internally pleading for the council to do a Bruce and exert some power in shutting it off. The crowd consequently thinning like Guy Ritchie's scalp, by the time what looks like the Palladium's house choir hum and harp on about a mildly revelational Like A Prayer (if only as everything else is so reprehensible) every tick and every other tock is scrupulously awaited. There is to be no transcendental experience either as prior to a prompt 22.28 cutoff the soulless anti-music of Celebration ensures this be the worst event since Bloc. Then, to rub acerbic MDNA in the wound, both Holiday and Into The Groove boom from every speaker. Not only are these cruelly unaired, but they're also about the loudest instances of the eve. "Everybody wants to party with you"? Now irrevocably not, no.
