CHICAGO--It’s a Mad Mad world worthy of a Broadway-style revue, or so it would seem to Madonna [ tickets ], who played the second of two sold-out shows at Chicago’s cavernous United Center on Thursday (8/29).

In just 105 minutes, Madonna went from plaid-clad gutter punk to pimp-strollin’, Latina fly girl without batting an eye. In between, fans were treated to stripped-to-the-waist muscle boys dangling from the ceiling, high-wire judo exercises, Kabuki-esque theatrics replete with a swordsman, a disturbing Japanimation rape sequence projected on a towering screen and Annie Oakley-style gun-slinging. Oh, and she sang too. And played guitar.

Keen Madonna watchers and anyone who subscribes to HBO know that Mad’s Drowned World Tour 2001 is broken into four distinct acts: Brit-Punk, Shogun-a-Go-Go, Cowgal and Flamenco Fabulous. The material draws largely from her two most recent records, “Ray of Light” and “Music.” The dancing is dazzling and Madonna’s voice has never sounded better.

Because the staging is so massive, there seems to be little room for spontaneity. Anyone who caught the HBO broadcast of the show from Detroit on August 26 and paid up to $250 for a ticket would recognize that Drowned World is nearly identical in each city it visits. Even the scant in-between-song banter is similar. The show's more inspired moments came when she wasn’t being propelled through the air attached to a support wire or straddling a mechanical bull.

Three numbers stood out, and during each one, Madonna demonstrated her new hobby of guitar playing. She forlornly strummed “I Deserve It,” while sitting atop a bale of hay. When she sang “I have no regrets/There’s nothing to forgive/All the pain was worth it,” you could feel her wrenching journey through mega-stardom. Re-working two older songs, “Secret” and “La Isla Bonita,” into gorgeous acoustic sing-alongs, made them feel loose, fresh and sexy.

The chaos of the modern age was well represented during the techno-tinged dance numbers. Strobe lights flashed as Madonna and company ran through “Impressive Instant” and “Ray of Light.” During a haunting rendition of “Frozen,” the sleeves of Madonna’s kimono spanned the stage while projected Japanese characters flitted across them.

The lack of older material didn’t necessarily faze fans, although they cheered loudest during “La Isla Bonita” and “Holiday”--funkily re-cast with rapping provided by longtime (and much admired) backup singers Niki Harris and Donna DeLory, and a sampling of Daft Punk’s “One More Time.”

By the show's closer, “Music,” you have to question the meaning of Drowned World. Indeed, it’s bang for your buck, but for someone as stridently supportive of artistic vision as Madonna, there’s got to be a point, right? But then you remember that, earlier in the show, she told the crowd, “I don’t know why people give the Midwest a bad rap. People are crazier here than anywhere else.”

Maybe that's the point: the over-the-top insanity of humanity. And surely if anyone was destined to illustrate that, it’s the trendsetting, globetrotting, omnipresent Madonna.