If you’re coming to see Madame X – Stand Up!

The first Madame X theatre show at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco was a bit of a different one from the artist-audience interaction point of view, one would say it didn’t go too well. The crowd was seated for much of the show, which clearly didn’t please Madonna. During God Control – the opening number – most of the audience remained seated until mid way through when they finally woke up.

Adding to the problems is that the stage in the Golden Gate Theatre is about fifteen feet from the first row of seats. Madonna’s management were asking fans in the front row to fill the gap, but the venue security kept sending them back.

There were no serious bidders for the Polaroid last night. Someone from the audience yelled they had $400 and M herself playful yelled “oh fuck off, this is worth WAY more”. Eventually a buyer named Chris (apparently a friend of Madonna’s) got the selfie for $10k with the promise to pay later.

The beer fan moment saw Madonna seating on the stairs having a group chat with the audience like in the last few shows in Chicago, but this time one fan was chosen to hand her the beer before the group chat began.

At some point Madonna asked the audience if she had played San Francisco before. Nobody in the crowd seemed to know otherwise and she didn’t remember either. Ironically she had and that venue was around a 10 minute walk from the Golden Gate Theatre. She played the San Francisco Civic (now the Bill Graham Civic) in 1985 on the Virgin Tour, where the Beastie Boys were the opener.

As there is no centre aisle in the Golden Gate Theatre, at the end of I Rise Madonna exited on the right hand side. Also, as the three shows in San Francisco have hard-copy tickets it wasn’t necessary to create the dedicated coloured stubs used in Brooklyn and Chicago.

There was a number of people that left early in the balcony and even some in the front row that Madonna has been commenting on with another fan. A few fans possibly had no idea that Madame X theatre wasn’t going to be a greatest hits lovefest and didn’t know how to handle the world music vibe of the show. The show start time was tough on some folks as well, it started at 11:00 PM with an updated official starting time of 10:30 over the original 8:30 one but unfortunately public transport in San Francisco stops running earlier than cities like Chicago or New York, BART trains don’t run after about 12:30 AM and the new 1:00/1:30 AM end time made it so folks couldn’t catch trains out of San Francisco.

Thanks to our friend Dave and Zak.