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A little over just half a year ago, Madonna was in the hospital and reportedly near the brink of death due to a bacterial infection that left her in the ICU and unconscious for several days. To think that this same woman would have opened such a spectacular show as ‘The Celebration Tour‘ four months after that brush with dying is the sort of commonplace superhuman power and determination that has defined Madonna for four unwavering decades. The journey of how she came to last is told on this tour, which somehow manages to encapsulate all those decades, all those hits, and all that controversy.

Her return to Boston was a long time coming, having had to cancel all the Boston stops of her last ‘Madame X‘ theater tour due to injury and then COVID. We were due for something special, and it came in the spot where she had previously been performing an acoustic version of disco classic ‘I Will Survive’. Boston got the premiere of an acoustic ‘Express Yourself’ which found the entire arena singing along with one of her greatest hits. It was a straight-forward reading in a production otherwise rife with theatrical bombast and effects, and pointed to something that naysayers have always discounted: Madonna comes with a surprising bit of substance, or she simply wouldn’t have lasted. The fortitude of that history is on full display every moment of the Celebration tour. 

It opens simply enough, at roughly 9:50 (relatively early for Madonna) with Bob the Drag Queen casually milling about the crowd and asking people to take their seats, which immediately prompts the arena to fill to seeming capacity as Madonna appears on a rising, revolving platform in an elaborate kimono and bejeweled crown, a new interpolation of her ‘Nothing Really Matters‘ video and song from 1998’s ‘Ray of Light’ album – a bold, not-quite-a-proper-hit for the opening, and absolutely perfect for the true fan. This is but a visionary greeting, the lyrics referencing the spiritual over the physical, indicative perhaps of Madonna’s more contemplative view of her past.

She dives headfirst into those early days, and at one point in a surprisingly-emotional show she claims to be in the midst of a mini-nervous breakdown, getting choked up as she spoke with an earlier incarnation of herself from her days living in the Lower East Side. Amid classic performances of ‘Everybody‘, ‘Into the Groove‘, ‘Open Your Heart‘ and ‘Burning Up‘, she introduces the narrative conceit of the evening: previous versions of herself portrayed by her backing dancers in masks and the costume of the respective period. As she meets up with that early Madonna of her 80’s beginning, she hugs the younger version of herself, crying a bit as she offers words no one was there to offer at the time. It thrillingly sets the stage for the emotional heft of the night. 

As her early 80’s carefree hey-day hits its climax, with a giddy rendition of ‘Holiday’ (masterfully melded with a snippet of ‘I Want Your Love’), the disco ball slows its spinning, gradually descending as her dancers fall one by one, until only one man is left, ultimately collapsing before Madonna takes off her Keith Haring coat and covers him. The arrival of the AIDS crisis informs a moving ‘Live to Tell’ which locates Madonna rising in a box that flies around the arena as large screens of all the friends she has lost to AIDS appear as so many ghosts. The haunting moment is accentuated as the images shift, evolving into multiple photos of more people lost to AIDS, multiplying to the point where they become an infinite checkerboard of all the lives snuffed out. Madonna knows this history as well as any gay man of a certain age, and it is easily the most powerful, and important, moment of the entire show.

From there, ‘Like A Prayer‘ is about the only thing that could simultaneously sustain the emotion while offering its own sort of healing in the one area which has always rescued Madonna: her music. Navigating a rotating carousel of masked dancers, she makes her way around one of her greatest songs, and the entire audience finds our own salvation in the only temple at which we have all collectively worshipped – the Church of Madonna. 

The loose timeline shifts along to the early 90’s and Madonna’s iconic Blonde Ambition period, embodied by the totemic red-velvet bed, where Madonna joins her golden-cone-bra-clad self and indulges in the self-pleasure that caused such a commotion that first time around. Slinking her way through an orgy-fueled ‘Justify My Love‘ and a welcome bit of her ‘Fever‘ cover from the infamous ‘Erotica’ album, she remains as brazenly defiant as ever, gathering her topless female dancers to her side as she whips the group into a rousing version of the dance-floor-shredding ‘Hung Up‘. From the sultry shenanigans of ‘Erotica’ and her ‘Sex’ book period, to all the sexy winking of the ‘Like A Virgin‘ days, and all the sexual provocation which she exuberantly embraced and reflected throughout her career, it’s still telling that her greatest force remains in a simple dance song like ‘Hung Up’. The crowd feeds on it more than the visual feast that came just before – and after the release Madonna proverbially spanks herself with a gem from the ‘Erotica’ album, ‘Bad Girl‘, with piano accompaniment by her daughter Mercy. 

Her daughter Esther spins some records for the ballroom portion of the evening, and does some fierce dance moves as a resplendent production of ‘Vogue’ finds Madonna enacting the gay-dance craze that she helped bring to the masses. Such cheeky fun is not without punishment, and for all the early 90’s madness that Madonna reveled in, she gets bound up by  several police officers. Throughout the process she sings a bit of ‘Human Nature’ before being rescued by her latex-clad younger self. 

That embrace of her former lives (or eras, as Madonna was the original shape-shifting eras girl) finds its most poignant turn as this version of her ‘Human Nature‘ video slowly unbinds her from the ties that the police (standing in for every oppressive entity) have put on her. Madonna sings a verse and chorus of ‘Crazy for You’, dancing with this version of herself in the aftermath of ‘Sex’ and ‘Erotica’, both embracing and forgiving that early 90’s period in one of the most moving moments of the evening. It’s not always easy to accept our past, even if it made us into who we are today; Madonna still proclaims to have absolutely no regrets, but I think she means she has come to a place of acceptance for everything she put herself through. 

While I would have been thrilled with a song she has never sung before, say ‘Survival’, the words of ‘Die Another Day‘ might mean more to her, and it ushers in the next section, which features a focus on family and survival. It’s a striking shift and accurate evolution when one looks at how Madonna’s career and family life had progressed. By the mid-90’s, she was starting her own family, and the arrival of her children signaled a change.

In another startlingly confessional moment, she recounts those scary moments near death, and conjures her kids as part of what inspired her to keep going. She launches into a section of defiance that finds her performing with her son David on guitar through ‘Don’t Tell Me‘ and ‘Mother and Father‘ (one of the best cuts from her ‘American Life‘ album). As pictures of their respective parents appear on screen, Madonna and David sing together and seemingly find some sort of joint catharsis. 

This particular evening felt even more like a family affair (sadly minus any ‘Keep It Together’ number) with Madonna mentioning that her very own sister Melanie was in the audience for this second Boston show. She referenced her children as a primary source of inspiration when she fought for her life in the hospital last summer. With that seminal event just a few months behind us, it’s amazing to see her dancing and thrilling like she always did, and if the moves are a bit more measured, they are also more meaningful. When she inserts that aforementioned ‘Express Yourself’ in place of what had been ‘I Will Survive’ (my sorry vertical video of that is here), it shows that Madonna is still evolving, still perfecting, still working things out. It what continues to make her so utterly fascinating. 

The penultimate section of the show, a 1-2-3 knock-out of ‘Bedtime Story‘, ‘Ray of Light‘ and ‘Rain‘ is an exercise in entertainment show-womanship. It begins with Madonna in a brilliant mirrored catsuit and extra-long pin-straight blonde hair, rising on a box and imploring herself and all of us to get unconscious. With everything that has happened in the last year, it’s a chilling choice, and as the song concludes, and her floating box appears with her son, who gives her a theatrical blue tube of some presumably-life-giving elixir, she rises, literally, over all of us and transfixes with a devastatingly dare-defying ‘Ray of Light’ – proof that music has repeatedly saved her soul. The bonus of one of her best ballads ‘Rain’ from the well-represented ‘Erotica’ era offers a sort of musical resolution that’s been decades in the making. 

The finale is a delirious all-too-quick mash-up of ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’ and its cheerleading chants, with ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’, which finally truly hits (after years of not quite connecting) as dancers in iconic Madonna fashion moments swirl and surround her. Some obligatory, but woefully-chopped, bits of ‘Celebration’ are thrown in almost as an after-thought (this was the ‘Celebration’ tour, right?) and the night ends a bit too soon as Madonna disappears behind a white veil that reunites her with her virgin days, now fully integrated into a frenzy of fun and acceptance. It’s almost as if she has reached the pinnacle of her career (again) and is simply reasserting that she knows better than anyone how to put on a show. Forty years into that journey, it’s a gift that she is still with us, and an honor to still be completely crazy for her.