By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***** RUNTIME: 120 minutes without interval

WHEN?: Thursday 2 November, tour runs through 24 April 2024

SETLIST: Nothing Really Matters; Everybody; Into The Groove; Burning Up; Open Your Heart; Holiday; Live To Tell; Like A Prayer; Erotica; Justify Your Love; Hung Up; Bad Girl; Vogue; Human Nature; Crazy For You; Die Another Day; Don’t Tell Me; Mother And Father; I Will Survive; La Isla Bonita; Don’t Cry For Me Argentina; Bedtime Story; Ray Of Light; Rain; Like A Virgin; Bitch I’m Madonna; Celebration

Madonna brings her director’s eye, her actress’s understanding of drama and her musician’s intimacy with her 40-year treasure trove of hits and deep cuts to tell the story of her life – and it’s everything we’ve always wanted from her and the best gig we’ve ever seen.

• Read on for reasons including how this gig features the most devastating coup de théâtre we’ve ever seen

The theme is motherhood, being a mother but also representing as a mother for her community of fans and the 17,960 of us in this Barcelona arena on this 11th gig of her Celebration Tour – and, boy, did we celebrate her.

A friend messages in the run-up to tonight’s show – only Her Madgesty’s 2nd Barcelona gig in 8 years following last night’s 1st – that ‘it feels quite hard to mess up a greatest hits gig when you have a back catalogue like hers’.

And yet Little Sparrow, the biopic of her life Madonna was to co-write and direct, starring Ozark‘s Julia Garner was pulled in January as the Queen Of Pop sought to celebrate her four-decade career spanning music, cinema and fashion with her fans in the live arena rather than on celluloid.

It’s not perfect. She arrives onstage at 10pm, 90 minutes later than advertised, but luckily we’re staying a 40-minute walk away and have no need to get up early the next day and the venue’s staff continue to serve alcohol even after this triumphant show to blunt the impact of all of us exiting onto the Catalan capital’s streets simultaneously.

Support act Bob The Drag Queen is given 7 minutes to walk through the crowd, set up Madonna’s backstory and take us back to the 70s where Madonna arrives in New York with just 35 dollars in her pocket and a determination to dare to dream.

Opener Nothing Really Matters is a deep cut from 1998 comeback album Ray Of Light and was chosen, we imagine, because it reflects on this youth (‘When I was very young, Nothing really mattered to me But making myself happy, I was the only one’), maturity (‘Now that I am grown, Everything’s changed I’ll never be the same, Because of you) and desire for love (‘Nothing really matters, Love is all we need Everything I give you, All comes back to me.)

In the 1st act we join her in New York club CBGBs playing guitar in band The Breakfast Club in songs she’s co-written including Burning Up and Everybody.

In the most devastating coup de théâtre we’ve ever seen she’s paying tribute to those lost to HIV and AIDS in the 80s as giant screens unfurl around the catwalks which litter the arena floor like the equally amazing and immersive production of Guys and Dolls currently wowing London’s Bridge Theatre.

She’s always been there for the LGBTQ+ community as an ally, and as a mother, and this underlines that with emotionally devastating consequences.

Elsewhere the pace is relentless and it seems churlish to pick out highlights when the level of performance and visual flair is this high but fans of TV’s Pose will have an absolute ball over the staging of Vogue.

There’s no band onstage but the dancers do occasionally dress as Madonna during some of her most iconic periods including a picture below referencing the Blond Ambition Gaultier outfit which gets a modern twist in the main picture.

It’s easy to forget that this tour is celebrating a 40-year career when the physicality of the performance is so high but there is the occasional reminder not least the navy blue leg support that is visible early on.

During Human Nature, not a song of which we were previously fond, she is roughed up by police as the strength of the narrative wanes.

A screen projects an image of Madonna’s mother who died when she was 5, an event often thought to be the driving force behind the star’s career.

We can tell she’s mostly singing live because during deep cut Bad Girl, where she’s joined on piano by daughter Mercy James, she’s occasionally pitchy but in many ways there has to be the occasional flaw to appreciate the sheer genius of this show.

Sources told Variety this year that Madonna is still committed to making the film, despite Universal pulling out.

‘I want to convey the incredible journey that life has taken me on as an artist, a musician, a dancer – a human being, trying to make her way in this world,” the singer said in 2020. ‘There are so many untold and inspiring stories and who better to tell it than me.’

We may not yet have that film but this tour deserves to be seen on the cinema screen in all its glory and we can see it doing the business that Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is currently doing in that arena.

Spain is the 3rd country we’ve seen Madonna in after the UK (Blond Ambition Wembley Stadium 1990; Sticky and Sweet Tour Wembley Stadium and The 02; 2008 and 2009; MDNA Hyde Park 2012; Rebel Heart The 02 2015 and Madame X at the Palladium in February 2020) and France (Confessions, Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy).

This time she didn’t quite play the setlist we would have wanted – no Express Yourself, Papa Don’t Preach or True Blue – but this is a minor quibble.

The last time we saw her, we concluded: ‘Will and how will she tour again? There’s no doubt that if anyone can reinvent the Madonna live experience it is the Queen herself.’

Truth Or Dare? We never dared to dream she would reinvent herself once more – and, truth, be this brilliant.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Madonna Tickets
• Have you seen a Madonna show before or heard a Madonna song? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this review? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @monstagigz, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook