The Cher Show – Neil Simon Theatre, New York

Teal Wicks, Stephanie J. Block and Micaela Diamond in The Cher Show at the Neil Simon Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus

The Cher Show continues at the Neil Simon Theatre, New York.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

With an abundance of jaw-dropping costumes, loads of powerful pop-cum-Broadway belting and a pulsating, smartly integrated – even though it’s jukebox – score, The Cher Show makes for a terrifically entertaining epic bio-musical – and a meaningful feminist doctrine as well.

The show’s book by Rick Elice (a Tony Award winner for his co-writing of Jersey Boys) skips nimbly through the life and times of Cherilyn Sarkisian, better known as Cher. It depicts how the titular lady went, as she says early in the proceedings, “from shy-and-afraid-of-people to Goddess-Warrior-With-Wings.” (She does the opening number with an enormous pair of wings attached to her back.) We learn how her striking dark looks stem from her Armenian father, who left her mother shortly after Cher was born.

More to the point, we see how Cher was able to gain fame and eventually fortune as well by taking control of her fate and finances in a universe dominated by males. In the show’s final moments, Cher recalls the advice of her mother: “I’d much rather you settle down and marry a rich man.” Cher replies: “Oh, Mother, I am a rich man.”

And if the perpetual ups and downs of Cher’s long career sometimes threaten to get a bit monotonous, Jason Moore’s grandly fluid direction and Christopher Gattelli’s exciting and nicely varied choreography quickly dispose of any hint of ennui with another exhilarating production number.

As in the recently closed Summer: The Donna Summer Show, three actresses portray the diva of the title. Elice’s script makes more effective use of the template than did Summer, playing up the idea in the dialogue and plotting so that we have Cher often debating with herself as to whether she’s doing the right thing when her life calls for sudden choices or as she reflects on past moves. And the three actresses work wonderfully well together.

In the foremost role, Stephanie J. Block plays the oldest Cher, labelled ‘Star’, the reflective tour guide as we journey back through her life. Block gives a vibrant, deeply felt performance, sometimes spiky, sometimes vulnerable, capturing as well the distinctive twangy contralto in delivering such songs as ‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves’ and ‘The Way of Love.’

Teal Wicks is ‘Lady’, the middle portrayal, and Micaela Diamond is the young Cher or ‘Babe’. Diamond takes the spotlight as the show focuses on Cher’s professional and personal pairing with Sonny Bono for the career-making team of Sonny and Cher, which went from an initial burst of success in London to Las Vegas and then starring on their own television variety show in the US.

With the television show and its various carnations. Wicks and then Block take over the narrative, and in one of the show’s flashiest numbers we see the two going through costume creation with her long-time designer, the legendary Bob Mackie. It climaxes in an extended showing of mind-blowing garb.

Another montage-like number has Diamond dancing and singing her way through Cher’s movie career, including her Oscar-winning performance in Moonstruck, to a rendering of ‘The Beat Goes On.’ After the movie career cools, another montage takes us through Cher’s record-breaking string of concert tours, with such numbers as Block’s ‘Believe’ and Wicks’ ‘Strong Enough.

The show paints a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Sonny Bono, well played by Jarrod Spector, as a smart fellow, genuinely in love with Cher. This despite the fact that when Cher finds out she owns nothing of their business, Cher Enterprises, (Sonny owns 95% and his lawyer 5%), his excuse is ‘It’s a man’s world’.

It’s a situation that leads to their breakup. The show also goes on to cover in relatively sketchy but nevertheless adequate terms for its storytelling purposes her later love life, with her marriage to the drug-taking rocker Gregg Allman (Matthew Hydzik) and her affair with Rob Camilletti (Michael Campayno), a bagel baker many years her junior.

Among other key roles, Michael Berresse and Emily Skinner are both notable as, respectively, a colourful Mackie and Cher’s loving and free-living mother Georgia Holt. Skinner also has a brief but impressive turn as a no-nonsense Lucille Ball, the TV comedienne titan advising Cher to follow her path in taking on complete career control.

The orchestrations and arrangements by musical supervisor Daryl Waters are a key element in the electricity of the show, which also abounds in physical glitz, cleverly used to punctuate and enhance the mood of the scenes.

In addition to the aforementioned costumes designed by Mackie himself, costumes enhanced by Charles G. LaPointe’s wig and hair design, the sets by Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis and lighting by Kevin Adams are fairly spectacular, alive with changing colours and movement, and at some points, giant live video.

All in all, it’s a show that may well deepen your appreciation of Cher as a person as well as performer. Of course, Cher is one of the producers, so the whole thing could be dismissed as a vanity proposition. Nevertheless, Cher’s final line is: “You haven’t seen the last of me.” And The Cher Show may well make you hope that’s true.

              Ron Cohen