Madonna’s Celebration tour is a messy victory lap that needs more razzle-dazzle

Madonna performs during opening night of the Celebration tour at the O2 Arena in London on Oct. 14. “Being broke and homeless and friendless and jobless and foodless and anorexic — it was not a vibe.” Monday’s concert was the first of five at the Forum on Madonna’s Celebration Tour — a career-spanning road show meant to “tell you the story of my life,” as she put it not long into the two-hour-and-15-minute performance. “I hope you can handle it,” she told her fans, “’cause just imagine: I had to live it.” Only a churl would deny Madonna the right to a victory lap, so monumental is her standing in pop history — not just as a maker of indelible songs and genre-defining videos but also as a cultural pathbreaker whose commitment to feminist and queer ideals continues to open lanes in the mainstream even now. For a tour called Celebration, though, this show — with more than two dozen of Madonna’s songs divided into seven acts — was curiously short on joy; again and again, she brought the crowd’s attention to the indignities as opposed to the victories of her ascent, as in the CBGB anecdote or in a little skit before “Holiday” in which she acted out being turned away by a doorman at the Paradise Garage. Overly moody arrangements of once-ebullient hits like “Hung Up,” “Ray of Light” and “Like a Prayer” didn’t help; nor did the baffling decision to forgo all-timers such as “Music,” “Borderline,” “Secret” and “Lucky Star” to make room for the likes of Madonna’s forgettable Bond theme, “Die Another Day.” “Like a Virgin” was part of the show but only as a prerecorded mash-up with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” that played as digital silhouettes of the two superstars were projected onto a screen.