All eyes are on the star, who plays a dealer with a Jackson Pollack she needs to sell for $20 million. She’s a striking woman, pretty with her tousled mop of hair, big eyes and chiseled jaw. The crowd is a forgiving one, roaring at lame lines and forgiving her rather flat readings. Of course, the audience also pulsates with the energy of the star’s friends, a few of whom, like Sting and Valentino, are almost as famous as she is.
But it’s not just the star’s friends who are desperate for her to succeed. The rest of us–we mortals with two names and tired feet–are also rooting for this middle-aged woman. Along with the rest of the world, we’ve watched her continual evolution over the past two decades. We’ve spent money on her CDs. We’ve worried about her early tempestuous marriage and the mixed reviews for her movies. We’ve been awed by her ability to move from Michigan girl to Manhattan dancer, sex goddess to tony British aristo wife and mother.
The effect of watching this woman onstage is curiously akin to watching your own kid as Second Pilgrim From the Left in the school’s Thanksgiving pageant. We own a piece of her, or think we do. So we strain forward in our seats, not rustling our candy wrappers or skimming our programs when she speaks.
The play’s program coyly lists the star as one “Madonna Ritchie,” and Mrs. Ritchie is what she is: stripped of artifice, makeup and attitude, she stands and delivers her lines without the benefit of backup dancers, a Gautier bra or a mechanical bull. The part–an adrenaline junkie who uses sex appeal to pit bidders on the Pollack against one another–is not a stretch. When her character rocks out to her CD player on stage, we see the Madonna we know from videos. When she bitches petulantly at her teddy bear of a husband, there are shades of her autobio documentary “Truth or Dare.”
You’re so star-struck at intermission, you look around and think everyone near you must be famous. Above the din of clicking kitten heels and clinking glasses, you play your own version of “Who’s That Girl?” Is that woman with the wild black hair, full lips and narrow hips actress-model Debi Mazar, who was Madonna’s best friend during her days at Danceteria? On closer inspection, no. Is that Ian Hislop, the pug-nosed, perennial Boy Wonder who edits the British satirical magazine Private Eye? Nope, just his type. The First Black Woman on the Cover of Elle Magazine talks to some people you’re sure you know from somewhere.
When you catch sight of the real stars, there’s no mistaking them. Donatella Versace’s stoplight-yellow mane and Roman nose are unmistakable, even from the nosebleed seats. An impeccably suited Tom Ford lopes out of the stalls, huddling with blue-eyed-girl Stella McCartney, tottering on sky-high black heels, as they wait for their car after the show. Sting and Trudie Styler slip quietly through the shadows.
It’s left to the B-list celebrities to address the thronging press: Kathy Lette, the writer of risque novels, gushes to the fluffy booms of the camera crews assembled outside: Madonna is “divine,” she says, and the playwright, a fellow Australian, is “a national treasure.”
It’s hip to decry celebrity these days, to devour Hollywood gossip while disparaging it, to stand up reading Us Weekly at the newsstand, telling yourself that you must quit one of these days. But anyone who has ever watched people watching Madonna knows that celebrity makes people happy. Outside the stage door, hordes of fans, bundled up against the drizzly night in anoraks and fleeces, wait for the woman who the security guards keep referring to as “She.”
“When she comes out, just usher her on through,” says one burly stage door to another. We shuffle. We wait. Nadia and Iuriy, a Bulgarian couple who didn’t see the play but came to catch a glimpse of its star, brought along their 5-year-old son, Nicholas. To pass the time, we talk about the other nights they have spent waiting in the cold to see Madonna. “At Wembley, we waited all night,” says Nadia, who wears an off-the-shoulder pink sweater. “I am her biggest fan.” Nicholas plays with his toy and says nothing. We shuffle and wait some more. A young journalist in a tie, with a steno pad, runs after Bill Irwin, who plays Madonna’s husband, for a quote. Everyone else ignores him, keeping their eyes trained on the stage door.
Suddenly, She comes through it. Mrs. Ritchie is there, with Mr. Ritchie at her elbow. She’s so close you can see the stiffness of her lashes, caked in mascara, and the lines of those famous cheekbones. She has that self-satisfied half smile on her face. It’s the same one that smiled down from your boyfriend’s wall in college, that smile that taunts you when you want to feel young, so you put on one of her albums and dance around with a friend at a party. With that smile, she walks through the door, and her force field follows. So do we.
We run down the alley, hoping to catch a glimpse of her getting into her limousine. We don’t because a crowd so huge has formed that the entirety of St. Martin’s Lane is blocked. But the energy moves, it follows her limousine, which slowly rolls one half block to the St. Martin’s Lane Hotel for the after-show party. When she goes, disappearing, scores of people reach for their cellular phones.
“Mamma, e bellissima!” shouts the raven-haired Italian girl into her mobile. “Oh my God, I can’t believe we saw her!” bellows the heavy-set girl into hers. “I got pictures!” Nadia bounces up. “I can’t believe it!” Iuriy smiles: “She looked very nice,” he says gravely. And you know they will remember this night their whole lives.
