“Madonna promised a disco-centric show for her current concert tour” – Hartford Courant rock critic Eric R. Danton writes today – “and that’s exactly what she delivered Sunday night at the Hartford Civic Center.”

It was a club-friendly two-hour set, packed with the throbbing beats and ethereal, trance-like vocals that have filled her past few albums. But the music was almost incidental – it could have been piped in. This show was about production values, and though Madonna was the star, the stage was the true focal point.

It was huge, for one thing, and it sprouted runways leading off to satellite stages out in front and to each side. Madonna was careful to use all the space she had, sending a vast crew of dancers out as her emissaries to the crowd while she roamed among them, as if supervising the equestrian-themed bondage on “Future Lovers,” or the roller-rink skate-fest that led into “Music.”

Yet she wasn’t always the center of attention, thanks in part to a series of technological marvels that were impossible to ignore: The giant disco ball that descended from the rafters, with Madonna inside, to start the show, for example. Or the huge glittering merry-go-round saddle she rode on “Like A Virgin” as video screens showed X-rays from her own horse-related mishap last year (evidence, perhaps, that Madge has a sense of humor?). Or the huge mirrored cross to which she was strapped on another older song, “Live to Tell.”

Click on the Full Article link below to continue reading this review from the Hartford Courant.

Although the last bit has caused a stir elsewhere, it was more funny than controversial – the microphone affixed to the cross made the whole thing resemble a press conference from Calvary as imagined by Monty Python.

Stepping quite literally out of the spotlight made it easy for Madonna to disappear for costume changes. She wore black to start, she wore white to finish, and in between she sported earth tones for the desert-techno of “Isaac,” which featured a musician by that name blowing a curved horn and adding backing vocals in a Yemeni dialect of Arabic.

She also showed off her guitar playing in the middle of the set, emerging in tight black pants and a high-collared black leather jacket with a black guitar to front a band dressed entirely in white and playing white instruments. Ah, such visual contrast.

The best musical moment came in another bit of contrast at the end of the show, when the beat behind a re-imagined techno version of her ’80s hit “La Isla Bonita” slowly morphed into “Hung Up,” the hypnotic hit single from last year’s “Confessions On A Dance Floor.” The transition was smart, and subtle, and seemed to fit well with something she had said to the crowd earlier in the show.

“It’s boring to not take risks, isn’t it?” she asked before “Substitute for Love.” “It’s boring to play it safe, isn’t it?”

They were rhetorical questions, but if anyone is qualified to answer them, it’s Madonna.

From courant.com.