May 15, 2008
The Diva's In The Details: Cher’s Las Vegas show will be great—if
she follows our advice
By STEVE FRIESS
As critical as it may seem that I can be, I’m actually a pretty
easy customer. I calibrate my expectations appropriately, I
give an enormous amount of benefit of the doubt, and I approach
every new experience with genuine hope that I’ll enjoy it.
The trouble with this is that I sometimes begin to worry that
I’m going soft. In the past couple of months, I’ve come away
from a litany of new Vegas experiences with such over-the-moon
impressions (The Palazzo is lovely! Double Or Nothing is a fun
read! The steak at Stack is sensational! Bette is, indeed, divine!
Jersey Boys is brilliant!) that I wondered if maybe I’d forgotten
how to dislike anything.
And then there was Cher.
There are only two other occasions when I left a Vegas theater
as angry as I was upon departing the May 6 opening night of
the newest Colosseum headliner. Those occasions, in case you
wonder, were the overhyped Hans Klok/Pamela Anderson fiasco
at Planet Hollywood and the waste-of-great-talent We Will Rock
You at Paris. The rush-job Barry Manilow show at the Hilton
was almost a third instance, except that I was with my mother,
and she adored every bit of it. So I forgave.
By the time I got home to write up a painstakingly balanced
piece for USA Today that evening, I had started to calm down.
I sat with my husband (who didn’t go) and vented for a few minutes,
then started to realize it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had thought.
Everything that was wrong, I discovered, was pretty easily fixable.
Except that I’m not so sure that AEG and Caesars Palace will
fix it, or why they should bother. Cher has sold out her first
set of shows and is selling so well for her next stint in August
that they’ve added a few dates. I met enough crazy Cher fanatics
that night who had spent thousands amid a recession to come
and see her not once but as many as six times this month. These
are people who would mortgage their houses if they hadn’t already
been foreclosed on just to watch this idol read a John McCain
speech. (I’ve never been one of those gays, but I respect the
woman’s talent.)
That, I think, is where my ire comes from. I love the Colosseum.
I love what it’s done for Las Vegas, I love its grandeur, I
love its odd shape and size, I love its significance as an exclusive
room only a select few who have achieved a certain level of
greatness may play.
Cher treats it like a fancy Madison Square Garden rather then
Carnegie Hall West. If the show remains as it is—and I really
hope they aren’t done yet—she will be responsible for degrading
the Colosseum’s majesty. Acts that follow won’t feel the obligation
Elton John and Bette Midler felt to do something with the space
that honors the bar set by Queen Celine.
Fact is, Cher decided she could get by with a gussied-up version
of her endless farewell concert. That’s too bad, but I doubt
that approach will change in any meaningful way since it’s so
fundamental. Still, I have some suggestions, and I hope someone
over there takes them to heart. Perhaps by the time this piece
appears, seven shows into the run, some of these points may
be moot. But I sincerely doubt it.
Anyhow, if someone over there has an open mind, here are four
points worth considering:
• Fewer Bob Mackie costumes, more Cher. Yes, they’re very
pretty and fun to look at and can only be donned by this particular
woman. But they also get redundant, and, more importantly, they
force her into constant (and probably complex) costume changes.
All the while, we’re babysat—for $250+ a seat—by videos that
are also available on YouTube or, surely, in the DVD box set
of The Sonny & Cher Show. Any show driven by style rather than
talent—or any show that feels like that—is problematic.
I understand that the wardrobe swaps are time-consuming because
they’re not as easy as slipping something off and on, but then
Cher should stay longer than one or two songs in each and give
us more of herself and the terrific, battle-scar-weary personality
we came for and relate to. As it is, there’s no time for any
sense of this woman. This is supposed to be a career-capper,
the doctoral thesis of Cher. As Britney might sing, gimme more.
• Drop the knock-off bits from Cirque du Soleil. Like Hans
Klok before her, Cher seems not to have done her due diligence
in the neighborhood. That two-hunks-balancing-one-another act?
Mystère. The aerial sheet-flying thing? Zumanity. Celine was
inspired to do her show by O. Elton John made it evident he
has a love for Vegas schlock. And Bette and choreographer Toni
Basil saw every last other Vegas show—even the ones with animal
tricks—as they designed their offering.
When sequences are already done—and done better—at shows in
neighboring hotels, you know Cher and her peeps didn’t bother
to check out the competition. That’s arrogant.
• For the love of GOD, drop the YMCA. Yes, they do this. With
Village People impersonators. And no Cher. The whole song, dance
and all. Tacky, tacky, tacky. And not in a good, how-’70s way.
Fire whoever thought this was a smart idea. Now.
• You’re in the Colosseum; act like it. This is the most prestigious
theater in the western U.S., not any ol’ concert venue. Celine
set the standard, being close to but somehow above her audience
in a manner that made her seem more elegant, more old-school
star-like.
Slapping the hands of the audience? Maybe not. Confusing them
about whether they can get up and dance? Get with security to
work that out. Forcing the crowd to stand up and cheer for five
minutes for an encore they know is coming because you’ve yet
to get to your biggest hit? Insulting.
Why should they listen to me? Because the people around me
at the Colosseum were similarly disgruntled. The most vocal
Cher fans won’t criticize a thing, but when word gets out that
this is a $250-a-pop Cher-scored Bob Mackie fashion show, those
curious but less passionate may just decide to catch two Cirque
shows and rent "Moonstruck" when they get home.
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