MADONNA GOES TO CAMP

There she stood, a vision of tawdriness: blond hair, black skirt, red bra over taut white flesh. She was that odd-lot remnant of the '80s, a Madonna wannabe. But most of the other fans at the Toronto SkyDome last week for the North American opening of the singer's Girlie Show tour were dressed in civvies. For them, the star was only something to stare at. She is not a role model, not after a decade in the spotlight. These days, does anyone wanna be Madonna? Does anyone even wanna see Madonna? Not on the movie screen. Body of Evidence, in which she played a woman accused of killing her lover with sex, earned just $14 million at the U.S. box office, less than her 1991 documentary Truth or Dare. Sales of Madonna albums have also had diminishing returns; the latest, Erotica, has sold about 2 million in the U.S., down from Like a Virgin's 7 million. Sex, her notorious $50 diary and sado-catechism, enjoyed a frenetic first-day sale in bookstores but quickly reached climax, then rolled over like a sated lover and went to sleep. It's true that her current caravan, traversing four continents and 20 cities (including New York last week, Philadelphia and Detroit this), is a smash. Biggest thing since the Who tour, you hear; biggest thing since the Rolling Stones. Alas, these fossils of Jurassic Rock are the merest nostalgia items; a fan wants to see them before they break up or crack up. Madonna sets herself the sterner challenge of being forever new, pertinent, shocking. But it's tough to stay on top by spanking somebody's bottom. In her recent work, Madonna has pursued dominatrix fantasies until she may be the only one getting off on them. She is in danger of going the blond widow in Body of Evidence one desperate step further, and loving herself to death. She can also play the vulnerable diva. When two teddy bears from admirers landed at her feet in Toronto, she begged, ''Just throw soft things at me, please.'' But Madonna is no Garland or Monroe, a prisoner to her neuroses. This is a woman in complete control of her career, canny about her image and ever protective of her shelf life. She made millions from going too far; it's just that for a while she went too too far. Now it is time for her to step back and appraise -- what else? -- herself. The result is Girlie Show, an essay in retro show biz. As another star with some mileage on her said in Sunset Blvd., ''Not a comeback, a return.'' The show is a return to the womb of popular culture: a calculated peek at American innocence. The proscenium stage is fronted with red drapery suitable for a Louisiana bordello; the title promises and delivers burlesque. But burlesque in the older sense of parody, travesty, impudent fun. There is humid sexuality at the start of the two-hour extravaganza (topless acrobat on a phallic pole, Madonna easing a whip past her crotch, dancers gyrating in auto-massage), but it soon gives way to simpler, sunnier images. For Rain, Madonna dons demure black; the look says, ''Listen to the sad ballad, the sweet harmonies.'' For Express Yourself, she's dolled up in royal blue bell-bottoms and a frizz wig, to pay homage to the gaudy innocence of the Cyndi Lauper era. The Wayback Machine keeps spinning until we are in Weimar * Berlin, with Madonna in Dietrich drag warbling Teutonic twaddle: ''Like a wer- gin, touched for the werry vurst time.'' She is Carmen Miranda (Going Bananas), Gene Kelly (La Isla Bonita), the Brigitte Helm robot goddess from the silent film Metropolis. She saves her best anachronistic joke for last: the steamy Justify My Love is performed in stately cadence and Edwardian morning coats. It might be the Ascot Gavotte from My Fair Lady. Nostalgia, as wispy as the scent of marijuana that permeated the SkyDome, is itself decadent. By highlighting the past, Madonna is saying the present has little to offer. In doing so, she is also forging a bond with her loyal gay audience. It is an axiom of pop culture that no uncloseted gay man can be a star but that women can be stars by appropriating gay motifs. Bette Midler steals gays' jokes; Madonna steals their style. It's not just in the Nazified naughtiness of her night-at-the-Anvil routines, or the treatment of boys as toys (the Queen steps on their supine writhing bodies). It's in the dressing up as iconic actresses, the power plays and the nurturing of her brood. In a Pieta pose the star strikes with one dancer, she looks like a Mother Teresa to the emotionally homeless. The fascinating thing about Madonna is that she is all-real and all-fake -- in other words, pure show biz. Girlie Show -- at once a movie retrospective, a Ziegfeld revue, a living video and an R-rated takeoff on Cirque du Soleil -- opens with Smokey Robinson's Tears of a Clown and closes with Cole Porter's Be a Clown. Pierrot is your silent host; the calliope music announces that this is a three-ring circus of clowning around. And Madonna, once the Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth.