Striking a New Pose

Doesn’t Madonna know there’s an energy crisis in California?

Pop’s most flamboyant star used enough electricity in the opening half-hour of her Drowned World Tour stop Sunday at Staples Center to illuminate all of downtown’s high-rises until Thanksgiving.

The theatrical bombast, including everything from flashing video screens to all sorts of hydraulic lifts, would smother most performers, but Madonna thrives on it.

The most thrilling moment in the tightly scripted concert came when the Material Mom soared 15 to 20 feet into the air in a battle scene inspired by the high-wire, wonder woman antics in the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

Where there were times in the early going Sunday where a little conservation would have given the show more warmth and human quality, Madonna has never striven to endear herself to audiences.

Her great strength (and sometimes Achilles’ heel) has always been her audacity--and it was her sheer blond ambition that once again was the trademark of Sunday’s frequently spectacular show, the first of four tour-ending nights at Staples.

When Madonna arrived on the pop scene almost 20 years ago with the catchy, lightweight dance single “Holiday,” her first audacious act was to think she had a future in this business. Her voice was thin and unconvincing. Her writing lacked individuality or depth. And there was only a trace of charisma in her early TV appearances.

To keep us interested, she teased and provoked in ways--mostly involving sex--that upped the ante every time our attention began to wander.

But her most audacious move of all may have been her attempt in recent years to get us to take her seriously as an artist.

It started in earnest with “Ray of Light,” a 1998 album that reflected the soul-searching of a woman at a point in her life where she could look at herself with candor and perspective.

Whether it was because of maturity (Madonna was 39 at the time) or the first blush of motherhood, she seemed, in such songs as “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” and “Frozen,” to be concerned with revelation rather than simply chart impact.

“I traded fame for love, without a second thought ... and now I find I’ve changed my mind,” she sang in “Drowned World,” and it was such a defining moment that it wasn’t surprising that she opened Sunday’s 105-minute performance with it.

Unfortunately, much of the tenderness and questioning of the song was lost amid the streams of fog and other garish, punk-accented elements in a crowded opening sequence. The segment, in which Madonna played electric guitar at times, was the weakest visually of the show’s four distinct stage designs, because it seemed so familiar.

At one point, the apocalyptic touches--complete with dancers writhing around the stage in gas masks to protect them from some undefined menace--seemed like an unholy mix of images from such familiar pop culture images as “Metropolis,” “Ziggy/Diamond Dogs”-era David Bowie and “Mad Max.”

The purpose of the segment only became clear at the end of the show when you could look back on it in context. Even if Madonna wasn’t a punk-rocker herself, she was one in spirit--and the imagery serves now as a way to express her early anger and frustration over the hardships she faced in her personal and professional life.

At one point Sunday, she even evoked, somewhat disdainfully, her old provocateur pose. “Do I make you horny?” she asked the crowd.

The exorcism of her old demons continued in the show’s second segment, though the imagery was fresher as she stepped into the Far East for some powerful images about male-female relationships.

She was both the submissive woman almost beheaded by a samurai master and then the soaring, scissor-kicking gladiator who triumphs over her enemies. In a final act of retribution, she gleefully fires a rifle at a particularly vicious enemy.

You can imagine lots of people in that gun sight--from those who betrayed her in love to those who wrote off her stardom as a result of trashy ambition.

After the liberation of that segment, Madonna let her hair down, so to speak, and literally kicked her heels as a cowgirl who makes no apologies for her lustful desires. The sequence climaxed when she mounted a mechanical bull for some suggestive twisting and turning that was so pointed that it’s a wonder she didn’t light a cigarette afterward.

During the cowgirl segment, she also delivered lingering optimism in “Don’t Tell Me,” a tune form her latest album, “Music.” The song’s mantra: “Tell me love isn’t true, tell me it’s just something we do ... but don’t tell me to stop.”

The final segment opened with an instrumental toast to Madonna’s lead role in the movie “Evita,” then worked its way through a celebration of Madonna today--one brought things full circle with a joyous version of “Holiday.” It was such an infectious moment that she should probably have ended on that note.

She came back with her band and dance troupe for an encore of “Music,” a song that aims for the same celebration of “Holiday” but was clearly an anti-climax.

Those used to the spontaneity of rock’s greatest performers may find the show’s Broadway-like discipline distancing, but this is the way Madonna wants to present herself. She is an entertainer in the widest sense of the word, and she is in her prime. Her voice is far fuller and more convincing than it once was, and she moves with a consistent grace, confidence and sensuality that few ever have matched in pop-rock.

Despite the high points of “Ray of Light,” her songwriting often remains pedestrian, though the arrangements Sunday offered a commanding mix of dance and rock textures.

And she accomplishes one thing in the tour that no major rival--including such figures as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen--has ever dared match. She focuses almost entirely on songs from her last two albums rather than use the safety net of the old hits.

Though you’d think fans would miss the hits, you couldn’t detect any disappointment from the audience’s ringing applause. Madonna did toast the old days in some video clips at the end, but she clearly had no interest in returning to those days. More artists should share that audacity.

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Madonna plays tonight, Thursday and Friday at Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A., 8 p.m. Sold out. (213) 742-7340.