Micaela Diamond, Tony winner Stephanie J. Block, and Teal Wicks in The Cher Show.
Anyone who has looked at my Facebook page since 2019 had to know that this was coming. I love Cher. Adore her. Since the first Sunday night I sat down as a kid literally in front of my parents’ console TV to watch the summer premier of the original Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, from the opening number of “The Beat Goes On”, to the corny but cute couple’s banter, to climbing on top of the piano for the first “Vamp” sketch, to closing with “I Got You Babe”, I was hooked. Following through her solo career, her divorce from Sonny, the Bob Mackie years, the movies, the Oscar (and the snubs), and the four year, three continent Farewell Tour (later deemed the Never Can Say Goodbye Tour), and the two that followed, I have been there for it all as she reinvented herself innumerable times. In 2019, my daughter gave me the best birthday gift ever—first row tickets she won in that day’s lottery to The Cher Show on Broadway, the life of Cher told through her music. I explained to her at intermission she had no idea what she did. That gift was not only the most enjoyable show of the Broadway season, or one of the best times I’ve ever had in theatre, it was the gift of my entire childhood back on stage.
Sadly but predictably, the entertainment world reacted exactly as they always have. The reviews were lukewarm, barely room temperature. The industry has never respected the art of a good jukebox musical, and when it comes down to it they have never respected Cher. The archaic Tony Award voting members predictably followed suit. And sadly, regardless of what people say, the reviews and the awards definitely effect the sales of most shows, and these fed into the unfair cultural mindset that Cher is not to be taken seriously. So I championed this amazing show. Often. The show was in fact a pinnacle for jukebox musicals, smartly and fluidly stylized as three of the many reinventions of Cher converse and present their story in the context of the TV variety shows that made her a superstar. Sadly it closed after a respectable 10 month run, but I will give the musical and the immensely talented performers (led by long overdue 2019 Tony Winning Best Actress Stephanie J. Block) one last solid defense against their detractors.
This review will be comprised of three parts. In the first, I will rebut, debate style, all the ludicrous critiques from the obnoxious “critics”, an anti-review, if you will, of their ill-thought out responses. The second part will be my personal critique, with the third being a reprimand to the out of touch Tony Committee, exposing their pathetic attempt to dictate art. Enclosed along the way will be images and video clips to back up my statements, so take advantage of them for your enjoyment. Especially if you were one of those unfortunate folks I highly recommended go see the show but you made other plans…..
Point/Better Point, part 1: Chris Jones from The Chicago Tribune
“This would be a familiar and forced metaphor in the best of circumstances. But when you have a subject who actually had at least two real TV shows, one alongside her first husband, Sonny Bono, the second on her own, there’s the additional problem of actually confusing the audience. At various points in Act 1, it is hard to say whether you are watching Cher (actually three Chers, but I’ll get to that in a moment) doing The Cher Show within The Cher Show, or The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, or the mid-1970s TV show known simply as Cher.”
My daughter who knew precious little about Cher or any of the multiple TV series she starred in had no trouble following the concept. Nor did the rest of the audience. Why did you, a so-called critic? And don’t be lazy, do your research to know that Cher was involved in not “at least two” but definitely four variety shows (The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Cher Show, The Sonny & Cher Show, and Cher), all of which are flawlessly recreated here.
“And in order to do either, it first will need to lose its outer frame, which involves Cher taking part in a TV variety show dedicated to her life story.”
Or not, as it turned out to be quite a fun, and fully straightforward, way to approach the story in New York. (Note: having seen some clips of some aspects of this device that clearly did not work in Chicago, like the bizarre original opening segment of Block and a dozen other Chers in her dressing room, this may have been semi-valid, but with the necessary modifications, it now clearly works in its current form.)
Point/Better Point, part 2: Jesse Green from The New York Times
But now let’s have some real fun and cut to the unforgivable, a predictably horrific review by Jesse Green, one of the current crop of self-important, egotistical New York Times critics who is known less for thought-provoking, in-depth evaluation of art as he is for his self-indulgent, catty, bitchy loathing of the fate of the present day musical, most recently with his notorious mean girls chat with the other Times critic he passed on as a “review” to last season’s whipping boy, King Kong.
“In its current state, you can’t distinguish scenes meant to borrow comedy-hour elements from those meant to be taken at face value. Cher’s difficult marriage to the Nashville-born rock musician Gregg Allman is covered in a ludicrous saloon sketch interspersed with bad jokes. Cher to Allman: ‘Are you from Tennessee, ’cause you’re the only 10 I see.’”
OK, let’s keep beating this horse. The characters pointed out several times in the first act how pathetic the writing on the show was (“How may dumb blondes can I play?, Block’s Cher laments). Miss Block even gives the audience a knowing apologetic look (á la Cher herself, if you go back to see clips of the actual shows) after delivering the corny “10 I see” line, to acknowledge that it was indeed cheesy. Again, my daughter who knew nothing about Cher’s other husband followed that perfectly, why was it too much for you, the so-called premier critic of the nation’s so-called premier theatrical column, to grasp?
“We need not rehearse the traps inherent in the genre, except to say that The Cher Show falls into all of them. It wastes so much time hammering its biographical bullet points and tunestack into place, despite logic or chronology, that it never seems to notice the unintelligible result.”
The show is Cher’s life told through Cher’s music. The songs fall into two categories: performance pieces and character songs. All the performance pieces are accurate in the timeline. The character songs don’t need to be, and some of the placement has resulted in some amazing theatrical moments, such as the extravagant mash-up of “When the Money’s Gone” with “All or Nothing” to illustrate their last ditch effort to pay off a tax bill by gambling on a Vegas act which gave birth to the TV show, or the breathtaking “Dark Lady” duet between Cher’s two husbands in the form of an elaborate Mackie-clad variety show dance number. You’re a critic but you’re not familiar with this means of story telling? Funny it worked perfectly well in Jersey Boys, penned by the same author, Rick Elice (who also received a Tony nomination for that project), with no issues. Maybe because Frankie Valli isn’t Cher?
“Cher’s 1989 comeback hit, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” is grabbed as the opening solely because of its title…..”
This is just stupid and you looking to pick a fight. It’s a musical retelling of her life in retrospect. What better Cher song with a different title would you suggest to open a show that starts in a present day concert and is told in flashback?
“….her entire movie career is crammed into a version of “The Beat Goes On” with new lyrics like ‘There’s Mike Nichols standing at the door!’”
Or, like the rest of us, we were excited to hear a high-profile Sonny & Cher song used to tell an entire segment of her life because the title was perfect for doing so. Sonny’s actual lyrics are merely a random list of world events at the time, why is this a stretch to update then to include another less random list of events relevant to the story being told here. It was mandatory they include this song for the audience. This was a perfect use.
“Anyway, unless you are Edward Albee, that three-ages-of-woman gimmick is subtractive, not additive. In giving us a kaleidoscope of Cher avatars called Babe, Lady and Star, the book writer Rick Elice, who also scripted “Jersey Boys,” creates three one-note characters from what might have been a single rich one.”
First off, the “avatars” are never addressed by those monikers in the show, only the program for distinguishing billing purposes. They are all merely called Cher in the show, just at different ages of her almost 60 year career (or do you know another actress who can age and sing from 16 to 72?). Most importantly, when they are together, they are not subtractive or even additive. They are exponential and the result is one incredibly single rich character. You just see her split into three fascinating facets of that amazing woman over a lifetime that you have to do minimal work and superimpose them upon each other in your interpretation. Again, are you just that lazy, so-called critic?
“Though Jarrod Spector gets Sonny’s Napoleon complex just right, he also gives him an adenoidal honk so exaggerated as to render him cute and harmless.”
Have you never heard Sonny Bono sing? Spector is dead on perfect and the audience embraces him, as demonstrated by the thunderous applause the first time we hear his iconic vocal entrance in “I Got You Babe”.
“A scene in which Cher, who’s dyslexic, struggles to read an audition script for a Broadway play is well handled by Ms. Block, but omits the fact that the resulting production was an infamous flop.”
That’s not Cher’s story, that’s director Robert Altman’s. Cher got the job and quickly moved on to Hollywood in the above maligned “The Beat Goes On” segment. So for Cher, it was a success.
“Nor is a word said about her initial difficulty accepting her son Chaz’s coming out as trans — a conflict that might have given some dramatic shape to the Star years. As depicted here, those years consist of little but farewell tours.”
Again this is Cher’s story. She is not here to impinge on the privacy of her adult children just to satisfy your tabloid mentality. But did you not notice that Baby Chaz was handed to Cher wrapped in a blue blanket to salute that gender? Yeah, didn’t think so. And did you sleep through the rest of the second act where the “Star years” also featured her marriage to and subsequent divorce from Allman over his drug issues, her inability to maintain a relationship under the constant hounding of the press, a change of careers and the battle she’s always faced with so-called critics like you, an Oscar, the embarrassing infomercial years, Sonny’s devastating death, and her physical and nervous breakdown from the exhaustion of chronic fatigue syndrome? After which she picks herself up again and does the tour montage as the last 5 minute finale of the show?
“The songs are beautifully arranged by Daryl Waters and sung better by the three lead women [and Emily Skinner] than Cher usually did.”
You just couldn’t help yourself could you?
“But it’s not cynical. It even has moments in which, like Cher herself, it’s strong enough to tease its own conventions. At one point, Star crows to Babe and Lady, ‘It’s so much easier to talk to myself when I’m all here.”…. “
You do realize you just negated your idiotic “no-one-but-Albee” remark above. Dumbass.
“….The solid laugh Ms. Block gets from that line should have been a clue. However gorgeously attired, a biomusical divided against itself cannot stand.”
And again, it was just too much for you to comprehend. You consider three different Chers division; I call it multiplication. And, for the record, you missed a perfect opportunity right there to pull out a “Living In A House Divided” reference because you really don’t understand your subject, which glaringly shows.
The Truth / aka Tonys, You Got Some Splainin’ to Do
Clearly, the critics had predetermined they would give no credit to the jukebox musical or its subject from the start. Then the too-old-to-be-taken-seriously Tony nominating committee, in a move to rival their notorious 1996 Victor/Victoria debacle (where they made sure not one element of the show would be nominated except for Julie Andrews), took it from there. What Elice crafted here though, with the help of the grand subject herself after seeing the Chicago tryout, is jukebox as an art form. He was praised for his concept of Jersey Boys, where each member of the Four Seasons narrated a quarter of the show (broken up into the “Spring”, “Summer”, ”Fall”, and “Winter” of the group). His efforts with Cher are even more creative with bigger payoffs. He smartly breaks them up into the logical three, young 60s Sonny & Cher recording era Cher (winsome newcomer Micaela Diamond), 70s Bob Mackie TV diva era Cher (Finding Neverland ‘s Teal Wicks), and rock star Cher from the 80s “If I Could Turn Back Time” days to present (modern legend in the making and totally deserved Tony Winner Stephanie J. Block, with two decades of equally deserving credits including The Boy from Oz, 9 to 5, and Falsettos). This time they nominated no one except Block for lead actress and Mackie for costumes, only because they had to.
As the stars of the show, Diamond as naïve, bright-eyed 60s Cher is radiant in her dazzling Broadway debut. She is a star on the rise. Wisecracking Wicks adds humor with elegance and strength of the growing woman finding her literal and figurative voice in the shadow of her overbearing husband. She also looks confident and amazing in the recreated legendary Mackie costumes. (Michael Baresse’s spot-on Mackie marvels that she’ll wear anything, to which Wick’s Cher counters, “Better than that, I’ll wear nothing!”). But amid this triangle of powerful performances, the till now underrated Block owns the show as the older, wiser Cher with a lifetime of experience behind her. She nails all the mannerisms and vocal quirks of the undisputed legend without becoming a Vegas impersonator. The difference is that Diamond and Wicks give amazing performances as Cher. Block simply is Cher. The three of them have a perfect chemistry as three aspects of the entertainment icon. And they each aptly portray the vague monikers assigned to distinguish them in the billing, the naïve, winsome Babe; the sharp-witted, evolving Lady; and the wise, legendary Star. Yet, no Tony nominations for two of the best supporting actresses working this year, particularly Diamond who is the discover of the season. Tony Committee strikes 1 and 2.
Elice and director Jason Moore deftly and cleverly orchestrate the three interacting with fun anecdotes and emotional discussions to tell the story instead of using a straight out-front narrator, much more effectively than in Elice’s Tony-nominated Jersey Boys book. But no nomination here. Instead Dominique Morrisseau nabbed one for her jukebox script, Ain’t Too Proud, which tells the story through a parade of eventually indistinguishable Tempations and brings the best part of the show, the infections music, to a screeching halt by just talking plot points like a junior high school book report on the group. Tony Committee strikes 3 and 4
Giving his leading ladies amazing support throughout the evening is a perfectly cast Jarrod Spector, whose amazing abs are all that betray he is not the actual Sonny Bono resurrected for the show. He has beautiful individual relationships with all three costars. He’s sweet and benevolent guiding young Diamond from behind the mic onto the stage. He’s eager but controlling with Wicks who has grown to become his match. And he’s also wiser and more evolved with Block in a moving scene where she reenacts her touching eulogy at his too-soon funeral. Spector shows his versatility and charisma, even when playing Sonny at his least likable. But no nomination here. Tony Committee big strike 5.
Adding solid support is Emily Skinner as Cher’s strong and supportive mother Georgia Holt, along with a fun cameo as Lucille Ball giving Wicks a few pointers as a friend who knows a thing or two about divorcing your business partner and co-star. Baresse is sublime as the incomparable Bob Mackie and director Robert Altman. And Matthew Hydzik oozes Southern Comfort charm as short-lived second husband Gregg Allman and Cher’s even shorter-lived stepfather. Michael Campayno is charming as final boyfriend, “bagel boy” Rob Camaletti (and steamy recreating their “I Found Someone” video with Block), and a delightful TV PA enamored with Cher.
Christopher Gatelli’s amazing athletic dance corps carry out his exceptional, innovative choreography. His conceptual dance to “Dark Lady”, sung by ex and current husbands Bono and Allman (sounds random, but the lyrics work: Allman:“They said the girl you love is secretly true to someone else who is very close to you”; Bono “My advice is that you leave this place, never look back, and forget you ever saw her face.”) where featured dancer extraordinare Ashley Blair Fitzgerald and the boys perform the most inspired dance number anywhere this season in the context of a huge Mackie-clad over-the-top production number. If you follow no other links in this review, do yourself a favor and watch Spector, Hydzik, Fitzgerald and company in the most innovative dance number of the season here and explain to me how Gatelli got passed over for a straight play in the 5th choreography slot….I’ll wait. (Tony Committee, strike 6 and huge F to you.)
And the final Tony eff-up, set designers Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis painstakingly recreate the old iconic sets for all four incarnations of their television variety shows as well as the UK’s Top of the Pops, a salute to her many elaborate concert tours and various other locales from LA to London, to a super flashy Vegas montage featuring musically synchronized slot machines. More than anything else, this snub reflects the fact that Cher-by-association still gets zero respect, because instead of this diligent work highlighted with glamour, they nominated Oklahoma for designing wooden picnic tables for a plywood barn dance. With chili. Tony Committee, strike 7. To the showers for you all.
(above: one of dozens of elaborate, high tech sets from The Cher Show: the one Tony-nominated set of Oklahoma. With chili)
Yet again, the critics slammed the door on a show’s coffin and the Tony Committee nailed it shot, as they have on virtually every other jukebox and movie musical that comes to stage. While it’s pretty certain nothing would have beat Hadestown for the main award that year, there is no reason except Tony manipulation that The Cher Show didn’t get one of the other slots between The Prom, Ain’t Too Proud, or, especially, the total mess that Tootsie turned into. But it’s criminal that particularly Spector and Diamond didn’t get supporting nominations, Elice one for book and Moore for direction, Jones & Banakis for set, and, the most glaring omission, Christopher Gatelli’s soaring choreography, who clearly should have been a contender to win. This tired rerun of Victor/Victoria 2.0 shows that in the last 25 years, nothing has changed. The committee can still manufacture a sweep or a shut-out. The “critics” are nothing but inflated airbags, and I have no hope for them. Hopefully as social media takes over they will become the dinosaurs they have been for the last 30+ years. But the Tony committee has no excuse. They claim legitimacy then act like the mean girls conducting prom votes. Those who heeded my advice can attest that The Cher Show was worthy of so much more attention than it received. Those who didn’t, hopefully, like Cher herself, it will find legitimacy in a never ending tour. #YouHaventSeenTheLastOfMe
Check out this reviews companion piece, Ten Things You Would Have Learned from The Cher Show, here.