The artist adds new routines to ‘Re-Invention’ show inside hed: Madonna stages ‘Re-Invention’ tour

These days, you can call her Esther or maybe even Madge. You can marvel at her newfound political values, her quest for spiritual understanding and commitment, her astonishingly taut, yoga-sculpted, body-as-temple.

And this Sunday and Monday at the Wachovia Center, you also can bask in Madonna‘s seemingly endless array of new showbiz shtick – from a technically awesome stage setup to a sparkling dance troupe introducing the hottest confrontational street moves (a style dubbed “krump”).

Why, there’ll even be something for the “youngsters” in the crowd – a Mohawk-sporting skateboarder working stunts to the X-treme. (What is this, Cirque du Soleil?)

Yeah, Lady Madonna is hardly resting on her laurels. Always wary of the Andy Warhol prophecy that everybody gets a mere 15 minutes of fame, she’s still striving to show us something new, to raise the bar of controversy, stagecraft and circus stunts.

Go on reading this review from the Philadelphia Daily News by clicking the Full Article link below.

The big switch

Remember past identities? The trashy street urchin. The Marilyn Monroe reincarnate. The futuristic sex temptress in bullet-bra. The elegant English housewife and mother, nicknamed Madge in British tabloids, with a high-falutin’ accent to match.

So it’s really rather redundant (and obvious) that the artiste has opted to call her latest concert extravaganza “The Re-Invention Tour.” This pop chameleon might just as well have dubbed it “The Madonna Madonna Show.”

But there is one genuine switcheroo this time. Madonna is mixing in some defensive as well offensive moves. Why? Because many of her recent career decisions have failed to set the world on fire, challenging her past rep for near-infallible vision and market savvy.

Take (please), her remake of the dark Italian film comedy “Swept Away,” directed by hubby Guy Ritchie, which stiffed at the box office in 2002.

Then last year’s “American Life” album was critically panned and, by Madonna standards, a commercial disaster. It took three months for the album to achieve platinum (million-sales) status. And the set produced only one charted single, the title track, which peaked on the Billboard chart at a piddling No. 37.

As for her girl-on-girl smooching with singers Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards, this major photo op seemed as much an act of desperation as it did a “passing of the baton” (or better, saliva) from one generation of pop tart to the next.

Some stumbles

And while the singer/dancer is certainly moving a lot of tickets on the new tour, her first in three years, this Madonna extravaganza has not been selling out instantly or everywhere, as in days of yore.

Just last week, local concert promoters released a new batch of tickets to both shows at the Wachovia Center, ostensibly after determining how to most efficiently fit the big production set into the arena.

The first show had previously been declared a sellout, but the second one never has been. And if you go online to sites like eBay, you’ll find offers of seats to the Philadelphia shows marked down to as little as one-third of face value.

So as an act of contrition to old-line fans, Madonna is doing what was previously an “unthinkable” in her book: She’s revisiting early hits she swore she’d never perform live again.

Choreographer Jamie King takes credit (or blame) for talking the singer into doing the frothy “Material Girl,” which Madonna now ends with “I am a material girl – but not really.” (So how come she’s demanding as much as $302 a ticket?)

For “Get Into the Groove,” she’s donning a kilt and jamming with a Highland bagpiper and drummers. Like, really.

Also presented in “re-invented” form are oldies-but-goodies “Vogue,” “Express Yourself,” “Like a Prayer” (with the artist strumming on acoustic guitar), “Crazy For You,” “Holiday” and “Papa Don’t Preach.” The latter now spotlights Madonna and backup dancers/singers in T-shirts that proclaim “Kabbalists do it better.”

Just call her Esther

That’s a nod, as is the Hebrew lettering that flashes on the video screens, to Madonna’s current passion for Kabbala, a mystical branch of Judaism that’s become quite the cult phenomenon in La-La Land.

She’s taken “Esther” as her Jewish name, and we hear that the assistant rabbi at the shul where she studies/worships is on the tour bus and blessing the stage before every performance. (To keep the spirit with you, be sure to pick up an official Madonna Kabbala cut-n-sew sleeveless shirt, just $75, on your way out of the show.)

For shock value, literally, Madonna gets strapped into an electric chair to sing “Lament” (from “Evita”), though no one pulls the switch. Ban the death penalty, while there’s still time!

Bush-bashing is also part of the grand, dramatic scheme. A fatigues-and-beret-clad Madonna and her army of camouflaged, dancing soldiers (the Madonnistas?) crawl through battlefields in “American Life.”

This was a concept judged too hot for MTV (and blowhard, right-wing commentators) to handle last year in music video form, but these days it’s proving more socially acceptable. Warming the song’s end, the soldiers all hug as on-screen imagery shows Bush and Saddam Hussein look-alikes getting cozy.

John Lennon’s peace-craving anthem “Imagine” has also been embraced by Madonna – and illustrated with bleak images of war orphans and bombed-out villages.

Missing in action, though, are a Madonna “given” of virtually every past show – a dramatic vignette or two with the artist writhing about the stage or co-joined with dancers in the heat of (mock) sexual pleasure.

Does this 45-year-old mother of two and children’s book author find such conduct unseemly?

Fear not, thrill seekers. Plenty of naked bodies can be glimpsed wiggling about on the video screens in gritty, jump-cut, art-film fashion.

Article by Jonathan Takiff, Philly.com