Madonna at Wachovia: Provocative ‘Sticky and Sweet’

She jumps rope, she plays guitar, and she sits with one leg provocatively draped over an arm of her pop star's throne and invites one and all to "come on into my store, I've got candy galore."

That's right, aging bad girl Madonna was in town last night for the Philadelphia stop of her Sticky & Sweet tour at the Wachovia Center, a tireless two hour affair that employed a dozen dancers, a band of Russian gypsy musicians, a 1935 Auburn Speedster classic car, and one fishnet pantyhose wearing megastar who leaves absolutely nothing to chance.

Well, not absolutely nothing. Towards the end of an aerobically relentless evening, Madonna did slow down to introduce her Philadelphia drummer Brian Frasier-Moore, and take one request, which turned out to be for her 1985 hit "Dress You Up."

She sang it accompanied only by the handclaps of an adoring audience, prodded along by their head mistress with comments like "c'mon, muscle boys" directed at a particularly buff group of worshipers gathered at her feet.

Other than that relatively human moment, the show proceeded with ruthless efficiency in four distinct parts, divided by costume changes and video interludes.

It began on the black leather clad dance floor, with selections from her 2008 album Hard Candy like "Beat Goes On," featuring guests Kanye West and Pharrell Williams projected on video screens. She rode down the stage runway in the sleek '35 Speedster, and on "Human Nature," played guitar, which she's increasingly comfortable doing on stage.

The show then moved on to graffiti art and Keith Haring designed streetscapes. The 50-year-old Madonna, who has not an ounce of fat on her all-muscled frame, did the Double Dutch in her '80s style gym shorts on "Into The Groove." She played a purple Gibson on a skillfully reworked chunky-riffed version of "Borderline," and in a psychologically disturbing segment, dressed her female dancers as earlier incarnations of herself in "She's Not Me," then assaulted them one by one.

The visually rich strangeness continued in the globally themed segment in which she sang Hard Candy's accusatory "The Devil Wouldn't Recognize You," while wearing a hooded robe out of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, as dancers dressed as samurai warriors convulsed alongside her.

Footage on the screen showed a funeral procession - perhaps for the death of her marriage to Guy Ritchie, which, according to wire service reports, is set to officially end in a London court today.

She caught her breath while the gypsy Kolpakov Trio played and her dance squadron showed off their stuff. And then she sang a forthright "You Must Love Me" in an acoustic arrangement as a needy plea to her audience, who responded with the affection asked of them.

As Madonna shows go, this one was short on sanctimony. There was only a video montage during a prerecorded "Get Stupid" that showed a parade of bad guys (Adolf Hitler, Kim Jung Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), followed by a parade of good guys (Mahatma Gandhi, Al Gore, Barack Obama), followed by a virtual Justin Timberlake getting busy with Madonna on "4 Minutes."

That song kicked off the final back-to-the-dance floor segment, with "Like A Prayer" suffering from a new too-thumping arrangement, and "Hung Up," benefitting from a guitar-based reworking that ended with Madonna eliciting feedback from her instrument by grinding it against a speaker with her derriere.

After that, all that was left was for Madonna to demand for her audience to "Give It 2 Me," and to repeat over and over the promise to them - and to herself - that was apparent all night long, and has been throughout her career: "Nothing's gonna stop me now."

Madonna continues her tour tomorrow in the region with a show at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.